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# The Encounter
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/the-encounter/
- Published: 2026-10-23T23:41:14.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T01:57:45.000Z
- Description: Edward Ahern
- Author: Edward Ahern
- Tags: Poetry

Fallen leaves crumple under my bottom,   
the relative warmth reawakening ticks.  
Clouds mask hints of moon and stars.  
I cannot see trees and trail before me.

November chill seeps through wool,  
but warming movements make noise  
and I abide my shivers and cramps,   
hands folded atop the Savage rifle.

I sense the pre-dawn dark through   
filters of excessively greasy food,  
cheap bourbon and tobacco.  
Awake for the birth of a hangover.

Then the faint click of hooves on rock  
the rustle of winter dead grasses   
the nearing noises of movement that  
I even with rifle scope cannot see.

I think to hazard a blind shot,  
feeling optimistic that my ears   
have bracketed the deer’s position,  
but hesitate for others are hunting here.

I return to the camp after false dawn,  
dragging back nothing but myself.  
Regretting not having seen my deer  
but knowing that to see it is to kill it.

### Edward Ahern has published approximately seven hundred stories and poems and is an editor at Bewildering Stories.