You imagine time rolls in the shiny black nostrils of an early morning doe. The scent in the air is not fresh, not breaking news. Days and weeks swirl headlong in the breeze. The smell of a dog comes out of the leaves. He hasn’t been here in a week. Still shoots her recent breath down and short white tail up and takes a shot in the dark. Not under-afraid, but over-prepared and highly aware of all things where. She is. The squish of winter mud between black blades. Background passing cars. A slew of houses. The sanctuary of a cemetery. Safest place for a wild thing. Where the humans hide and the grass is greener this close to the other side. She knows. She smiles. Nibbles green heads off Sable Mayberry’s earth bed. White pearls draped over exposed collar bones. The doe leaves off black pearls of her own. Still hunting. Over the bones of Dean Perry and Gavin Broome. Both avid deer hunters in their time. Their eternal dirt duvets just soaked in deer urine. You imagine she smells the black powder on their bare knuckles. The flesh of her ancestors where it betrayed them in their rotting frames. The scent of the dogs that crowded their beds and licked their heads. Long dead. Resurrected in the nose of a doe. 

The slimy afterlife of scent. The nose knows. The deer doesn’t. 
The amazing superpower of the past: to whisper what’s coming.