I See a Boy

I see a boy going out before breakfast, keeping within earshot of the ocean. The meadow is thick with lupine, poppy. His cuffs are dark with dew. His boots suck in the ooze. He moves diagonally, pausing now and then, listening for the distant breathing of the ocean, careful not to mix it up with wind in the pines. Once he stopped. It was a brown deer turning a flamboyant crown of horn toward him, as if in re- cognition of something shared, past, present, future... I hear it crash again back into darkness of paths immemorial. The shaking boy goes his own way more slowly.