Deer At the Hosta
The deer never ate the hosta buds
before you died. Now they don’t bloom.
Hostas bloom so late in summer
I’d be impatient for white billows.
No dahlias this year without you either,
and the irises went haywire—
offering so few flowers,
and not the dark purple lit by apricot,
the fuchsia poppies
blooming now alone.
Back to the deer—
how did you keep them at bay?
They eat so precisely, headless shoots
remain on the flourishing plant.
Everything is different
since you’ve gone.
Everything is different
each time I consider it—
I have a thousand and one narratives
of how I could have saved you.
Sometimes you are the villain.
Sometimes I am the monster.
Sometimes we just fumble
together hopelessly in love.
I should dig up the hostas,
or the deer will come each year,
taking more and more each season.
I could leave them as a dream.
Someday the late bright white
perfection will return.
*
Laurel Brett, essayist, novelist, and poet feels the responsibility to do her tiny part to heal the world. She is inspired by awareness and love, and their expressions, and nature. Her novel, The Schrödinger Girl (Akashic Books, 2020) was called a page turner by the New York Times. Her work has appeared before in ONE ART, and in Second Coming, The Ekphrastic Review, Lilith, The Nassau Review among other outlets.