Winter meeting - a Christmas sonnet

The wind is wrong. The dog is not aware a buck is watching us through standing corn. His tawny coat is earth, his glinting pair of antlers seem more ragged stalk-ends, torn by harvesting. I see his silent stare at us as though from tense and floating eyes. Oh, he is fully there - and yet not there: like Christmas thoughts, I muse, which can arise in any field, at any time, confer the resource of their being on the scene. Once born to men, the thoughts of Christ occur unasked, bestow their implications. Clean and Leep, desired or not, they offer grace. From then till now there is no empty place.