In Silence

(for my mother)

Death is silence, it is not sleep.
It circles, as the deer the house,
seeking shelter, browse in deepest
winter, and having found
a window lit, stays, circling,
its pattern set.

We return long months to find
the walls caught in a web of tracks,
where the spectral deer have passed
so precisely through the snow,
and light the fire, and the lamps,
await a glimpse.

Death is with the deer who hide,
wearing the forest like a cloak,
until that moment we turn aside
to tend the stove. Patient, still,
it never guesses, awaits its chance,
makes its entrance.

Somewhere in the dark beyond
there lies a snowy, dozing bear,
looking much like death as any
dreamer, but for waking. Yet
this is my experience — death is
not sleep, it's silence.

(the cabin / Winter 2000)

Deer bedding under the Daisy Tree
(the cabin / Winter 2014)