Out of the rutting, summer undergrowth,
a rasping roar… Saxons considered them
the mark of kings… Celts believed they were fairy
cattle, herded and milked by goddesses…
Though hundreds of thousands are culled or die
on the roads each year, we may have two million
wild deer because of autumn planting,
mild winters, new woodland and the death
of the lynx: ruminant, secretive,
destructive by default in residual
forests, on moor land, in the green belts
that join towns to cities – the interstices
of haphazard copses and unused fields –
and in suburbia’s gardens and parks.
Driving slowly through fallen snow south
on the M40, we passed a Roe deer,
a hind, at the top of the embankment,
the ‘wrong’ side of the fence, picking her way
through the drift towards the Forest of Arden.
By David Selzer