Waumandee

A man with binoculars   

fixed a shape in the field   

and we stopped and saw   

the albino buck browsing   

in the oats—white dash   

on a page of green,   

flick of a blade   

cutting paint to canvas.   

It dipped its head   

and green effaced the white,   

bled onto the absence that   

the buck was—animal erasure.   

Head up again, its sugar legs   

pricked the turf, pink   

antler prongs brushed at flies.   

Here in a field was the imagined world   

made visible—a mythical beast   

filling its rumen with clover   

until all at once it startled,   

flagged its bright tail—   

auf Wiedersehen, surrender—   

and leapt away—   

a white tooth   

in the closing mouth of the woods.