i check the bleuets on the boundary to the west
feral shrubs in reclaimed and overgrown prairie teeming with life
the berries are still pink-sky-sunset blue
not yet dusty indigo blue
i’ll check again tomorrow
like i did yesterday

a lone deer forages
in the freshly seeded field to the north
probably soybean this year, i say with confidence
after observing rotation and rest patterns for nitrogen, for six summers, now

i raise my hands up slow and high
surrendering to the deer
to show i don’t have a gun /on me/
or a bow or blade, bought or made
my tradition is not forged steel and gunpowder,
my ceremony is not stone, bone, shaft and feather,

my nature is not always claws these days

i hold my mouth, soft, open
in a weird smile
to show
i have no usable canines

i transmit a thought, a query
concerning the herd
“where are the six you lived and walked with all last winter?”
there’s no response
to my attempt at telepathy — although — one day

i emanate waves of empathy out from my heart — i imagine them like Lake Michigan gently lapping at the local beach
and hope that kin feels it

because

to be alone, to be in the world

to be alone in the world

to be alone in this world

a moment later
the deer bolts
but not away from me, to the east
but to the southwest, nearer

the twilight train’s here — 9:24 tonight
and the coyotes, on the move,
compulsively give themselves away
their instinctual howls
predictable, thankfully

unlike people driving on highways or down country roads
or the unusually quiet and still people in the woods
in camouflage and orange
both, licensed to kill
animals

this is the eve of the June New Moon
and as far as the eye can see,
fireflies are hovering above the meadow
harmlessly illuminating for their own kind
an incidental gift for passersby
and as far as the ear can hear,
frogs in the woodland are
harmlessly singing for their own kind
an incidental gift for passersby

if I illuminate myself from within
or sing my intuitive songs,
for myself, harmlessly,
and you, and you, and you — do too

would that not also be an incidental gift
for passersby?