The Visitor....

I sensed you before I saw you....

Stepping coyly from the shadows of the wood...

The starkness of the white pronounced in the deepening gloaming;

All the colors of the spectrum combined into something purer.

You acknowledged me and, though your companion retreated, you came toward me - self-assured and unafraid.

You stopped within a comfortable distance and seemed content to continue grazing while I sat on my porch watching - my hands becoming stiff with the cold and my eyes struggling to adjust to the thickening dark. 

When the dusk turned inky, you lifted your head to me and then to the wood, and slowly turned and made your way back.

I watched you and even thought I saw you turn back to look at me one last time ...and then you slipped into the shadows from where you came.

{*A few months back, I posted about my first sighting of a white stag. (That post can be found here.) Initially I thought this was the same deer and I had been mistaken about it being a stag.  However, I went back and looked at the photos from that day...both the ones on the post and the others I had not posted and I am still convinced that that was, in fact, a buck.  If you look at the photos from the first post, poor as they are, you can definitely see antlers. And while bucks typically shed their antlers here from January to February, this deer has an entirely smaller, more delicate, frame than the first. Also, the first deer seemed more mature in keeping its distance...this one seemed naive in her innocence and lack of inhibition in my presence. 

 Mayhap there is more magic in Nod than I give it credit for.}