Fresh surprise...

The Fawn

There it was I saw what I shall never forget

And never retrieve.

Monstrous and beautiful to human eyes, hard to believe,

He lay, yet there he lay,

Asleep on the moss, his head on his polished cleftsmall ebony hoves,

The child of the doe, the dappled child of the deer.

Surely his mother had never said, "Lie hereTill I return," so spotty and plain to see

On the green moss lay he. His eyes had opened; he considered me.

I would have given more than I care to say

To thrifty ears, might I have had him for my friend

One moment only of that forest day:

Might I have had the acceptance, not the love

Of those clear eyes;

Might I have been for him in the bough above

Or the root beneath his forest bed,

A part of the forest, seen without surprise.

Was it alarm, or was it the wind of my fear lest hedepart

That jerked him to his jointy knees,

And sent him crashing off, leaping and stumbling

On his new legs, between the stems of the whitetrees?

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

We spotted this fresh little fellow along side Sinking Waters Trail today. The green flys were pretty heavy on him... or her, but it lay stock still, movements of breathing barely visible. A sweet surprise as Spring continues to birth.