Off the porch, a deer skeleton abacus is ticking with beetles:

the simple math of this season. I can’t prove it, but time moves

slower in the winter. Dark and the coyotes come smoking

through the cedars. Dark and a buck is dragging his antlers

through the mud, too tired to lift his head. Heavy in the spawn,

fishing was a bust: a few blade crappies, a mason jar with a sugar spoon

and three marbles in it. My uncle makes lamps from turtle skulls

and a boy bought one the other day with an unplucked chicken.

He calls himself Big Bear, even though you can count all his ribs,

even though he’s let dozens of deer eat for hours on their hindlegs

from the persimmon tree. I can’t blame him; I’ve done the same myself.

There’s no sense in begrudging anybody a few unripe persimmons—

when they’re green, they’ll half suck the wax back out of your ears.

I know about his hesitation. How any movement, a cottonwood leaf

sawing down the bright air seems too loud and breaks the old music

of the hills set in motion years ago. When it’s quiet enough to hear

a bee dusting pollen from his shaggy shoulders, hear the pulse buried

under the world’s rough worker-hand. I’ve always thought of deer as silent

witnesses to out messy lives. I’ve spent my life watching, too. Easy to spook.

I’m out floating in the wilted sigh of the wind. Back to a long summer day.

Alone, out back in the storm tree where I dreamed as a child, lightning-hewn,

I consider the welder I knew whose wife left him when she got tired

of washing her clothes in the creek. It takes five minutes to be his friend,

but a lifetime to understand whatever it is that bangs around in his mind.

Consider how he used to slice peaches with his elk-bone pocketknife

for me to eat. How he plucked apples from dumpsters to feed the deer

of his woods. How he one day started to have an itch above his temple

and couldn’t stop scratching, and one night he lays down to dreams

of a snow sifting down softly on his early spring trees, while skin falls

from his scalp like many blossoms in a song about sunshine.