Esther Sadoff
Its own locks and unhinged doors.
Deer know no bounds.
Only the rack and shiver of roving cars,
the barreling rush of smoke on wheels.
When I passed between them,
the world shuddered with imagined impact.
I slipped like a key in a hole,
their stillness reverberating,
solid as columns, elegant as statues.
I see them now, motionless as the moon,
one doe and a fawn,
mist-laden horizon bounding into black.
How foreign are the paths between trees,
the many openings between sticks and leaves.
One path leads to a glade where sun and field are gold,
the other to the grift of bones.
One path says fear. The other says myth,
the untenable march toward light.
That day they lived.
***
Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Santa Clara Review, Drunk Monkeys, Roanoke Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. She is also a poetry reader for Passengers Journal.