I both would and wouldn’t recall looking out the south window,
March, midday while talking on the phone and seeing
two deer and then two more, loping in from the south field,
each, in turn, leaping over the gravel drive
where it curves as if it were a rocky riverbed flowing around
the unfenced field, posts and barbed wire pulled out
years ago. If recollecting were forgetting, the gambrel barn
might forget its hundred-fifty years of history, weather
and seismic shifts, and stand up tall again, no gaps for bats
or swallows to fly in, or perhaps the barn wouldn’t be there
at all, the settlers not yet arrived, the land still roamed by bison
and people of the Miami tribe, passenger pigeons coursing
in great flocks that darken the sun. If recollecting were forgetting,
like four deer, I, too, might be able to leap
over the histories of things and go on loping, beautifully,
and with ease into the east field.