Meeting

Shannon Dougherty

After the climb out of the creekbed's shade,

this clearing brimming with late light,

the city's jagged skyline, islanded in a sea of trees,

the wind scouring the grass,

the distant freeway's flowing.

A helicopter is a dragonfly

I am a breath

Until like a mountain range

always there, knowing of me before I noticed them,

three whitetail in the tall grass are watching.

Light pours through their alert ears and runs off their backs.

They can hear my heart

felling tree trunks.

Knowing no other way

except for one of us to yield,

the deer move first. Hooves driving

into the ground, they heave themselves

higher up the trail.

The trees take them.

Shannon Dougherty is a poet living in Corpus Christi, on the Texas Gulf Coast. She has lived in Dallas, Austin, Arizona, and Montana and received degrees in English and creative writing from SMU and the University of Texas at Austin. In her years of writing (and not writing) she has published poetry, fiction, and academic prose. She has been an editor, book buyer, library reference clerk, and preschool teacher. Her work has appeared in Acorn, Modern Haiku, and The Chaffin Journal.