Jill Moffett

That next morning, I was undeterred by what was required of me.
That I should be a washer of dishes, a scheduler of dentist appointments,
an organizer of tangled cell phone chargers, a signer of report cards,

was all parenthetical to what mattered most.
My heart a filament, my body an incandescent bulb.

Outside, the whir of a lawnmower.
Inside, a persistent transcendent thrum.

Sometime in the past
a windstorm or microburst had felled
a fleet of tall cedars, now woven together on the ground.
Rays of light found their way through the tangle of branches.

Perhaps you are a deer, who loves this kind of place
for its safety. A deer lying down opposite a fallen tree,
camouflaged by branches and undergrowth.

A deer that leaps up when she hears a man
stomping though the woods,
who would be left holding his heart in his throat
wondering where you had come from,
how he hadn't seen you earlier.