I wanted you sharper than this —
the whole of you, antler to shoulder,
pinned in the light like a fact.
But you gave me only the eye.
The rest of you still
belonging to the green that made you.
& I stood there, caught between
the wanting to know & the knowing that this —
this half-arrival — was the truer thing.
You watched me with a wild clarity
I hadn’t earned. I watched you
dissolve at the edges into everything you came from.
Neither of us fled.
That was the miracle — not the stillness,
but the staying inside the uncertainty.
I came back to this image because
I thought I’d failed.
I came back because
the blur was where you lived.
That was the miracle — not the stillness,
But the staying inside the uncertainty.
I love this poem!