Emissary
Near dusk in the pasture, coaxing the cow
who gave birth yesterday to stand.
If we spoke cow, we could explain
paralysis, stillborn, the necessity to try.
Instead we talk in sweet apple halves,
fresh water hauled in heavy buckets,
mud sucking our shoes.
Good hospital visitors, our voices
promise hope we don’t feel.
Suddenly a deer steps into the tall grass
at the woods’ edge.
While we tend our patient,
he comes to watch, parting the grass
in sleek, noiseless waves.
When we lift a strand of fence
his soft face nuzzles our hands,
accepts kisses.
All around us, the air stills.
No sound from the road,
crickets in the fields,
or frogs in the creek.
In all the universe
only us and the deer
and behind us, the cow,
getting to her feet.
Elizabeth Simson lives in Oregon and is the author of Sea Change (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Versal, and other journals.