(March 26, 2020, the day the U.S. takes the lead in coronavirus cases)
Can they tell we are different, the deer?
Can they smell it on us, our fear,
trepidation in the way we walk,
hear it in our ordinary human talk?
Sometimes in winter’s cold bleak,
we watch them from a window.
The old, the strong, the young, the weak.
Now, they look at us. What do they know?
Robert Wrigley’s most recent book is Box (Penguin, 2017). He lives in the woods of northern Idaho, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes.
