What We See, What Sees Us
K.T. Landon
-For Bud Tibbetts
The truck fishtails down the mountain road,
snow flying past the headlights like galaxies.
We hit the brakes just feet before the two deer,
who pause and stare at us, blinking
in the wet, unnatural light, their bodies blurred
in ragged winter fur. They turn away slowly,
set their faces against the roar of the snow,
going on because they must, attuned
to something else—not memory or hope—some
understanding with the frozen stars, some wholeness
that persists behind the skin of the world.
K. T. Landon is the author of Orange, Dreaming (Five Oaks Press, 2017) and received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net anthology, and “What We See, What Sees Us” was selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in Best New Poets 2017. She serves as a poetry reader for Muzzle and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative, New Millennium Writings, and Passages North, among others. Find her online at www.ktlandon.com.