Waumandee

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.

Source: Poetry (March 2009)