There is a deer skull

White bone emerging

From the melting

Whiter snow

And it could be

That it never had flesh at all

If not for the bit of fur

Still attached

As if to say life persists

Past the inevitability

Of death

This relic of a wild thing

That walked

That grazed

That breathed

Mocks with evidence

Of a certain future

To which we are chained

This sculpture of existence

That lays frozen

To the still and quiet

To the icy arms of the earth

That strives to consume it

That it might become new again

Testimony to an endless cycle

Of which we are a part