Lynn D. Gilbert

Habitat

In my yard a half-grown fawn
snuffles up tiny fallen crabapples
under trees that are starting
to drop a few leaves toward autumn.
 
Already light is shifting
southward; soon birds will follow.
The sky pales; vines shrink
and yellow. Satisfied for now
the young deer bounds across the creek
into the woods. By the time
snow covers the remaining apples
the fawn’s spots will have faded.
 
As forests and houses burn,
I find myself hoping
its nimble species survives
my own, which seems bent
on collective suicide, destroying
woods, ocean, rivers, the very air
we breathe in smoke-shadowed cities—
everything we need to live.

Lynn D. Gilbert’s poems, twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, have appeared in such journals as Appalachian Review, Arboreal, Blue Unicorn, carte blanche, Light, The MacGuffin, and Sheepshead Review. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in an Austin suburb and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.