To count the times
a basketball changes hands
demands such single-mindedness
that half of us miss the gorilla
who disrupts the psychiatrist’s skit,

so if the question is
whether anyone remarked the buck—
patient as a lawn ornament—
where pitch sloped to thicket,
I doubt it. I do not doubt

you could hide a troop
of gorillas in a peewee soccer game,
under the fluorescent pinnies
and whoops. A deer? For it, the blur
at the field’s verge would suffice.

Not that it matters. No one stops
what they’re doing for a cervid
who keeps his distance.
Only when, later, a buck
nuzzles a ball into the goal

does anyone take out a phone
and film the deer (it is the way
we stare). If the question is
what we notice, the answer
is always a little. But if the question is

what he saw in us, this creature
who aped the way we kick cabbages
into rope lean-tos, then wheel around,
dancing in false hooves—well, then,
let’s hypothesize joy.