The deer approaches the feederlike a man late to church,careful not to make any noise.In the lowering light, I stillsee her spine: ridge of pockmarked ash.Rain rot, a friend once told mewhen I had come to see his horses.Only closer can I spot the fliesforming their dark constellationsacross her storm-beaten fur;the still defeat of her tailhanging like a rag out the windowof an abandoned car.On the nightly news, a scientistis explaining some rare bacteriathat lives only at the bottom of the sea.Soon the Titanic will disappear completelyshe states not as a possibility, but fact.I think of my father sittingon a yoga mat last spring.When I told him to breathe,picture a green field and thenhimself in it, each body parta petal descending to the ground,my father asking softly—Even my eyes?