When I saw you

crouching along water’s edge

gazing just over the water

tips of your sight, like pelican wings,

I thought of the deer

swimming across the lake,

perhaps to escape a wolf,

perhaps to enjoy life,

and I resisted

the urge to know

what made you appear

like a small stone

to be skipped,

a number of lives to be counted.

Brad Garber writes, paints, draws, photographs, hunts for mushrooms and snakes, and runs around naked in the Great Northwest. He has published poetry, essays and weird stuff in such publications as Embodied Effigies, Clementine Poetry Journal, Sugar Mule, Barrow Street, Ray’s Road Review and others. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013.