Not Much Is Never Nothing

At 3am in a tourist town,
The tourists asleep in hotel beds,
A mule deer and her fawn cross the road

Empty of cars or pedestrians,
With only one poet to watch them.
What should the poet do about this?

Is this an appropriate subject?
On the one hand, yes—night and nature
Juxtaposed with human emptiness.

On the other hand, maybe not now.
What is the poet’s identity?
Where does the poet fit or not fit

In the mess of human matrices?
The doe stops, coincidentally
In the painted lines of a crosswalk.

Her fawn also stops in her shadow,
Still as a shadow, while she pauses
To sniff the presence of the poet.

Then they both proceed to cross, as if
They were pedestrians. The poet
Can’t help but grin. A coincidence.