Last night I saw a deer. A young one walking very hesitantly in what is a field. The tall weeds (or had it been a corn field?) bush-hogged down and under distant street lamplight and high light of the half-moon, the deer perked its ears curious. I turned off my music and sat in stillness, silence. She came a little closer, nudged the ground, and made a few more steps. She was coming towards me timidly when a distant car backfired and she ran off in the direction of the road. I was afraid for her. I couldn't see into the darker shadows if she went into the road or back across the field into weeds not yet bush-hogged. But my evening was marked by her presence. A sweet hope welled inside. Patience.
A little later last night the stars fell across the sky, but I was reminded they are not for wish-makers but for astronomers to gaze upon. I laid on a blanket in the clearing near the grove of trees. If I could have I would have climbed one tree and watch the sky from the tallest limbs. If I could have I would have wished on stars, not planets. The constellations were forgotten by me; was that Scorpio? There's the Big Dipper, so is that the Southern Cross? And is that Capricorn? Or Virgo? Andromena?
On this blanket under stars and planets and meteors, the half-moon filtering through the far trees. Leonard Cohen in my ear. I heard him like I had never heard him before...
"I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme.
You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye."
And...
"Baby I have been here before.
I know this room, I've walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch.
Love is not a victory march.
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"
....
"I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth: I didn't come all this way to fool you."
The deer had left. The moon was no longer behind a tree. I saw a few meteors streak the sky. Lightning bugs pretended to be meteors, setting off their light bulbs just above me. Mosquitoes bit my toes.
Midnight had come and gone.
It was now time to go
and time to say goodbye
to stars and wish-making.
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