In the Nightshade Family

It’s hesitant as a deer
You don’t want in your garden,
Checking out your garden gate.

Check that. You don’t have a gate
Or a garden. You have seen
Deer at the gates of owners

Who do have gardens and don’t
Want deer in them. It’s like that,
Like being a garden guest

With no garden of your own,
A little awkward, sighting
The deer the owner doesn’t,

The deer sniffing carefully,
Scent being a form of touch,
Of molecular contact

In a world of more contacts
Like that than you’ll ever know,
And you’re rooting for the deer,

A little, but you also
Like your host, the gardener
Whose goods the deer will mangle,

And you can’t decide whether
You should shout off the deer, or
Keep still as it advances

To start cropping. You keep still,
But still hesitant yourself.
That’s what it’s like to compose,

To watch something without words
Sniff the edge of a garden
Of toxins that aren’t your own.