Joan Hofmann, Collinsville, Connecticut, USA
too soon over / the short day ends
as late afternoon / spoons into night
they appear / from snowy pine forest
complete in tableau / mid-field silhouette
on brown mound of / prepared cornmeal
when I arrived / how thirsty I was
for a long slag / from my well of being
for prepared indulgence / long-awaited
I gulped you down / starved / two
deer standing arched / heads bowed
eating steady / a feast interrupted
by sight of movement / heads up
they turn / to stare down threat / dare!
sometimes / at winter’s late-day
shadows play / obscure / cast doubt
of what’s being seen / or seeing
yet / in the dim / I swear I saw
the pair leap / as to fly boundless
© Joan Hofmann
Joan Hofmann is Professor Emerita at the University of Saint Joseph, serves on the Executive Board of Riverwood Poetry and was the first Poet Laureate of Canton, CT. Her poems have been published in anthologies and journals, including Forgotten Women, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Juniper, Bird’s Thumb, Spaces, Englyn, SLANT, Plainsongs, Plum Tree Tavern, Caduceus and Freshwater, and in three chapbooks: Coming Back (2014), Alive (2017) and Alive, Too (2019). A retired educator, lover of the natural world, and frequent traveler, when not walking or hiking near her home on the Farmington River she is often living off the grid in the Eastern Townships in Quebec, Canada.