She Lept as Light as Laughter

by John MacBeath Watkins

In the forest, in the twilight I met a young and graceful doe who paused, and looked, did not take flight until I doffed my hat and said hello. She lept as light as laughter through the brambles by the trail and I stood there, gazing after as my light began to fail.
(The public domain art is by Edwin Henry Landseer. Surprisingly hard to get a 19th century picture of a doe, because the artists of that era were obsessed with depicting deer with a nice rack, like Edwin Landseer's Monarch of the Glen