The Deer Park

The Deer Park

         On the other side of the park, past the see-saws, even beyond the small ranger cabins, the fence sits. It stands, like a defiant dog, unwanting to move, uncaring and cold. Beyond there are trees. Tall, piney trees, fallen over trees, rotting trees. A duck pond, scummy and unappealing, sits empty of its future occupants. The wind wafts the stench of rotting underwater plant life towards me. The grass, long and uncut, sways gently back and forth. It is dry and dying, the drought has not left anything out of its vicious claws. A rabbit bounds from beneath a cabin, towards the deer feeder that sits on the left side of the enclosure. Food lays about, all willy-nilly from the deer that eagerly feed from the dispenser. It deftly oozes its way under the fence to fetch its fallen dinner. Several others follow suit. Unimpressed, I turn back to the enclosure, looking for something else.
          I, standing close to the fences binding presence, witness several brown mounds upon the upper yellow-green slope of the enclosure. A head pops up, and the mounds suddenly turn from nameless forms into deer. I only see two of them, laying in the shade under the spreading branches of an ancient pine. It is a doe whose head rises. She is scraggly, with a pelt that appears as if to be moth eaten. She stands up, uneasily, and begins to descend from the top of the hill down towards the feeder. Her steps are tentative, as if she is afraid she will trip or fall, as she descends. I witness her painful-seeming progress with a heavy heart. She finally reaches the feeder, tired. The rabbits take no notice of her as they fatten themselves. She turns towards me, for she recognizes that I may have something to give her. I walk up to the fence, just as she does. We stand face to muzzle, her with her big doe eyes, mine with the eyes of a predator gone soft. She attempts to nuzzle my fingers, but the fences close meshing barely allows a finger through it. She seems to understand. I grab a handful of somewhat green grass. I try to shove it through the fence, and most of the coarse plant reaches the other side. The doe grabs it with her tired old mouth, and she chews it with relish. Her eyes close for a moment, as if she were thinking of her younger years of health and vitality. She then opens them. Her pelt is rather tatty, there are defined bald patches where the hair won't grow. She seems so thin and scraggly. As I watch her turn away, I think of where the other deer have gone. It has been so long since I last visited this park. There used to be so many lively deer. I suppose that's how life changes. It seemed, in my memory, that the fence was never so binding, never so forgiving as it now was.