Hum

Strange to see the deer at this hour, grazing 
in midday heat on the grasses that fringe 
the interstate. Three together, where flecks 
of sunlight on chickweed and Dallis grass 
break up the heavier shadows of pines.
All are small, one still with spots. A mother 
and her fawns, if I had to guess. She alert, 
watchful, deliberate in the way she’s set 
her body between theirs and the roadbed.
It’s been a difficult summer. Something 
in my daughter’s begun resisting sleep.
The drift out of consciousness, something 
catches there now, and to soothe her through it 
in the afternoons I level the car
out over the Low Country and let the drone
of wheels on asphalt pull her down. Marshland, 
cotton fields, the narrow corridors
of ragged trees. And every day this week, 
heat building from the horizon and still, 
humid air, towering thunderheads.
The kind of storms, I know, that can drive the deer 
to this edge to fat a little before bedding down
in their secret dens. We’re driving toward it, 
the split air sharp and sweet already,
and I imagine a crack of thunder,
that the drumming of rain on the roof will wake 
my daughter as we part that darkness,
aim the car at its trailing edge. Again,
I’ll tell her how, as she slept, the world went on 
around her. How there were deer in it this time, 
three, who are sleeping now as the world goes on




around them. The hum of traffic. Us in it. 
A storm carrying its shadow eastward 
over the continent, the beaches
and breakers, and out above the shelf 
where it breaks up over open water.

Read more from Issue 17.1.