DEER CYCLONE

I was a romantic child –

an unfurled deer surrounded
by a sanctuaried herd.
I discovered the magic of family
between and within words,
a collection of language yet
pronounced though eternally learned.
Words were my first love because
they taught me that love existed at all. I yearned
for requitedness: passion and ardor
and frenzied lust. The kind that
would leave me both breathless and breathing.
The kind found between trees, the quiet
movement of familiarity and freedom
that taught of both escape and surrender.
As an adult, I cocooned myself in my belief
like reindeer protecting its fawn –
circling and circling –
creating a cyclone of refuge
in a beautiful maneuver of one:
of both the shielded and the shielder.
I found romance there. In our breath,
the warm mist in the cold, absconded from
our bodies that turned toward leaping –
spotted, a rooted tale of love in the brush
collected upon our hungry tongues.