Standing in the dark, searching the night sky for meteor streaks, I hear a deer whuff distress

I freeze-frame the glacial way he’d rise from his recliner, brace against his walker to greet me— when, in his day, he’d crave a ticket an

An orchard has many seasons, each tree its sequence of life following a dormancy masked as death.

And now I find myself between two deaths, longing to live more fully, awaiting a body not discarded but renewed.