family of three

fawn nearly sure on spindly legs

gangles away from slender stag

to stand in the intersection

traffic slows, stops, drivers and passengers smile and wait

as doe peeps over the wooden

fence she has leaped to get to a garden

fawn struggles up on the lawn

stage follows, peers at doe, finds

tall grass beneath a coastal pine

until doe leaps again the fence

nuzzles her fawn, springs over

the north hedge, which the fawn

traverses between low trunks

and stag bulls through