The grown-up deer are ghosts, their forms invisible against
The hillside's dormant grass. The fawns are, likewise, wholly
Hidden, lumps of dun with stripes of white, exactly like
Ground they lie on underneath the leafless trees. The land,
So plainly dead, is living. Foxes leave their footprints nightly
On the newly fallen snow, and owls pass by in the moonlight,
Eerie-silent, on their ways to murder inattentive rodents. Humans,
Cattle, mill inside enclosures, gazing, slack-jawed, at TVs.
A half a million years indoors have left them insulated from
The carnage taking place around them. With some luck,
They will not face it. Chances are, they will.