Antlers sharp and many pointed

Broader than shoulders

Threatens without words,

Lean and muscular

Bounding high into the sky

Fences meaning nothing.

These creatures wise without books

Knowing the language of the wood

Hissing in the whispered wind

And threatening in it’s quiet.

Knowing things by instinct,

Meaning that nobody knows

Just how it knows things.

Aware that given long hours

In sunlight some things bleach

And some things burn.

Ears turn around

As my feet the ground pound,

You already know

By the shape of my thorax

That I’m rather different.

You vanish as you smell me,

You taste my breath on the air

And foresee that I always fail

More thoroughly than I succeed

I just might try to spare your life,

So naturally you’re afraid.

– Vagabond Prophet