Poem for Friday and Deer in the River

How to See Deer
By Philip Booth

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

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Our plan for Thursday was to take Daniel to the hotel in Alexandria where he and his friends are staying for Magfest -- they didn't win the room lottery this year, so they're not in National Harbor -- but we weren't sure of his timing, so we had a low-key morning while he did laundry, and watched The Tomorrow War while I reset my old laptop to give to Paul's parents. Daniel's friends weren't planning to arrive until close to dinnertime, so we dropped him off in the late afternoon after a walk. 

We ate leftover pizza for dinner, talked on the phone for a while to Paul's brother Jon, who's helping his parents pack to move next week, and I had my usual Thursday night fangirl chat on Zoom while half-watching the women's short program at the US figure skating national championships. Now I'm watching Eddie the Eagle because the skating put me in the mood for it. Here are the two stags we saw in the Potomac River when we were walking along the C&O Canal last weekend: