Upshot
What most I may eye after, be in the end...
                                                  —Hopkins

The deer in their winter coats
easily mistaken for clumps of shrub
except

their oblong glances
hoofprints
point the untapped way through nether

underbrush till
sun sudden from cloud
ejects them

and sprightly over the surface of earth
one by one they lope—
the deemed, the having been—

past ivy
inching up cobbled walls, steeples
itching for God

beauty and the wind
that blew it
(wild for to hold)

flagging the light's
unraveled silk
sky litter of scattering sparrows

see how flee becomes follow
as they take you with—
and how could you resist?

like a love song to a conquered city
you'd no business
pining for.

Copyright © 2006 Deborah Tall All rights reserved
from New Orleans Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission