Temporal, the deer, your animal self curled down, moss sheltered & tenuous. It was an easy knowledge: yellow blossoms motionless smoke gathered in the reeds. Snow's reversal, brevity, a shapely whiteness of shutter & wench. This is as it is. An intimate mercy.

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This poem was written for a new friend, Juliet Cook, under her functional spell, deduction of birdsong, and the influence of Rome.