Heather Corbally Bryant

Fawn

(excerpted from a longer series of poems, “The Millay Bestiary”)

Sitting on a weathered picnic table, full with morning sun,

Witnessing a wilderness of August arrivals—

I look around when I hear a sound of hoofs, a gallop,

A tawny fawn who sleeps in tall grasses beside our path appears,

Crossing up from Millay’s homestead—she has free reign over 

This land—

She looks back at me, right at me—before disappearing amidst

Clumps of Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace—

Slipping through old thyme, the reeds, the Steeplebush—

As if disappearing through a beaded curtain at play’s end.

---

Heather Corbally Bryant, PhD, has published ten books of poems; her eleventh, “The Coffin Makers,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in the winter of 2023. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Massachusetts Book Award, and have won honorable mention in the Open Chapbook Prize of the Finishing Line Press. She teaches in the Writing Program at Wellesley College.

Website: www.heathercorballybryant.com Twitter: @heathercbryant3