When November takes down our tender stemmed flowers

It at first can feel barren but

I’m not the only thing left standing still

There are always trees.

I walk out of the rain quiet deer woods

Deerless

But I am there

To see the last light burning

Behind the pines.

A fawn ran out of the staghorn stand

And stood

Like a deer in headlights

Before he headed for the hemlock hills.

We got a truckload of oak and maple leaves to mulch our elders and shelter our soil.

Sal and I spin through them, chatting.

A friend sends me a meme of me - Tree hugging on a Friday night.

Another friend sends a reminder

“You will experience them perhaps as corporeal beings, but more often, we perceive them as shades, variations in light, swift movements, and unexplained sounds.” and I remember.

I follow a buck through evergreen woods. If it weren’t for where his antlers rub the trunks of balsams clean, he’d be a ghost to me.

A friend takes a buck in the morning and tells me

“He had a full belly of acorns and was in the thick pines with looker of a doe. Next thing he knew, he was dead. Not a terrible way to go, I think.”

Let me live

Let me die

In the company of trees.