A man with binoculars
fixed a shape in the field
and we stopped and saw
the albino buck browsing
in the oats—white dash
on a page of green,
flick of a blade
cutting paint to canvas.
It dipped its head
and green effaced the white,
bled onto the absence that
the buck was—animal erasure.
Head up again, its sugar legs
pricked the turf, pink
antler prongs brushed at flies.
Here in a field was the imagined world
made visible—a mythical beast
filling its rumen with clover
until all at once it startled,
flagged its bright tail—
auf Wiedersehen, surrender—
and leapt away—
a white tooth
in the closing mouth of the woods.
