Deer crowd the chalk slicks 

to drink the washout after a blast, 

the potter’s glaze, mineral bilge,

anything for the tannic burn 

of an acorn. The white dirt. I ate it all the time, 

just to get a rise out of you. In Georgia, 

hot sheeting rain and a big hydraulic pump 

make bore hole pools that are blue in the day. 

They drown fawns, but the coyotes 

will drag them out. You could hang 

from your elbows with your chin above the water. 

Your hips kept floating up. In the winter

I broke a lock to back the Civic in 

and warm the pool 

with a fixer-tailpipe. We came 

for weeks. No one in Dublin knew.

You worried it was too much. 

You’re becoming like the deer, 

half-sunk and silent. Desperate.

We see them watching even now.