The Stag in the Woods

The naked eye—

Do you see him, antlered there,
Part shadow and part briar,
His foreleg feeling out the air,
Cautious, stepping, tense as wire,
Dappled, out into the glade?

The magnifying glass—

Look, his nostrils storm with ticks
And blackflies lash his eyelids—
Mangy haunches, antlers split,
Limping, fleetness checked by pallid
Illness barely kept at bay.

The microscope—

Insect bodies glow like naves
With stained glass in their chapels,
While microbes deck the cloistered caves,
A riot spotted, prismed, dappled—
Beauty even in decay.