Mule deer don’t come into town much.
But today, six stand in Mrs. Curtis’ front yard
on the north side of town across the tracks
so I stop.

I am walking to a holiday party where I will talk
with seasonal friends
the vacation home set who come a few weekends a year
to take pictures of our signs
with warnings like ‘Bear Lives in Area!
whole elk carcasses in truck beds
at the Conoco during hunting season
the mobile home park beside the high school
framed by the highest peak in the Absarokas,
pleading.

They have never faced Paradise Valley during a storm
held their coats like parachutes around their bodies
and waited for the katabatic winds
to lift them off the ground.
They have never been eight-years-old
at Sax & Fryer Books and held out their hand in ritual
toward the women working the register
who they know will place a handful of warm M&Ms into their palm.

Out of the corner of my left eye,
a field we slept in
the first warm night of June
and awoke at dawn with cottonwood fluff
pressed like eiderdown to our faces.

The mule deer pull at the grass.
Take a picture, they say,
you will never safely cross 89 South
by memory on a busy summer day,
or know the bends in the Yellowstone River
where the water pools clean and gentle
for a drink.

What belongs to you
like a forgotten flower bed
to six mule deer in the quiet December cold?

Like the plain facts and hiding places
of a small railroad town
to its aging children?

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