me and the buck

Moonlight on grey gravel, so pure and present that my body cast a shadow as I stepped out of the house into the early morning.

I stopped for a moment and looked up. The sky put forth its moon among a scatter of pinpoint pricks of starlight.

“A good day to be alive,” I thought.

I stepped down the uneven stairs and down the path that leads between our house and the neighbor’s. Everything was quiet. Everyone asleep.

Clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk— I stood at the edge of the steps that lead to our deck. Across from me, sooo close: a one-pointed buck.

We stood in stillness, the buck and I. Most of a minute passed as I looked, he looked.

All we did was stand there and breathe.

Until SCRAT— his hooves clattered across the wooden platform, across the concrete wall, onto the soft dirt bed below the redwoods and down to the creek.

I walked across the deck.

I felt his presence after he left.