HART

At last, he’s standing at the top of things, over a scrubby drop sheer to the river, with its stones lifted and bared like knuckle-bones; against spot-lighted brakes and leaves where he no longer bolts or weaves away, against their bronze and red, his flank first, then his hornless head flares out, and stays utterly still: you hear him breathing, breathing till the end, if that’s what has to be, and the living white shape you see won’t run further from what he knows: right here is as far as it goes.

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