They Know Something

Near where the river of cars pours by the darkening, scrub-covered hill, headlights now on, the mountain's silence stands against the loud gush of metal like an accusation. Three deer browse on the hillside, the fawn nervous, the does watchful but unperturbed. They know something. Their fragility, which has grown from that of the brush, the grass, the withered flowers, and which is one with that of the fading light, the refined, planetary product, does not regard the variable rates of mortgages, even its own. Their mutual fund of life and rhythm suffers the present with a dumb patience, the same that rolls this knob of the earth around toward morning, knowing if that comes, they come, or when they no longer come, the deer to browse, the brush to grow and seed in rain, in summer drought, in wind from the sea, morning itself, with its rose light, also will withdraw.