Escape

Behind the claw-branched madrone the doe rises as we come, trots up into the cedar, head high, ears back, vanishes with the ease of smoke, with the tense grace Margot Fonteyn lavished on high halls dripping with gilt, where diamonds pulsed on many throats, husbands paddled the canoes of their dreams among swans, on still, mirrored waters. The doe's display is for an audience of brush, sky, grass slightly waved by her passage, for all her dance instructors, even us.