The Story Sundered

"'Perfectly serendipitous' said the boy."

Three does, three pair, no four, four pair
Four pair of mule deer ears, no, more,
Silhouetted, alert, bounding
Through barren, harmless underbrush,
A wind lifting human voices
From the stamped trail to camouflage
Born of tens of millions of years
Evading apex predators,

Incapable of counting these
Obnoxious, boot-stamping, blowing
Nonsense exemplars of the kind
As one, just one, the only one
Left. There was a grammar to this,
A kind of extra-narrative
Significance to narration
Once. No longer. Deer watch the trail.