The Stags

This is the multitude, the beasts you wanted to show me, drawing me upstream, all morning up through wind- scoured heather to the hillcrest. Below us, in the next glen, is the grave calm brotherhood, descended out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling like the signatories of a covenant; their weighty, antique-polished antlers rising above the vegetation like masts in a harbor, or city spires. We lie close together, and though the wind whips away our man-and-woman smell, every stag-face seems to look toward us, toward, but not to us: we’re held, and hold them, in civil regard. I suspect you’d hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight our shared country, lead me deeper into what you know, but loath to cause fear you’re already moving quietly away, sure I’ll go with you, as I would now, almost anywhere.