DEER

	by Armenoui Minassian


	A lone deer comes to my backyard,
	She used to come with a large vanguard;
	Raising her ears at the smallest sound,
	She warily grazes the grassy ground.

	I do not know what happened to the others:
	Her timid sisters and her horny brothers.
	I observed this one when she was a newborn,
	I recall her running through the shrubs of corn.

	They used to come at the dusk and dawn
	Before we started to mow our lawn.
	Sometimes they appeared in the middle of the day,
	When we approached them they didn't ran away.

	When they appeared I started to cheer;
	I thought we made it- the man and the deer:
	Living in a harmony, sharing the land,
	And building friendships, obviously... on sand.

	Now she disappears when she hears a footfall.
	Behind the pine trees under cover of nightfall.
	I wished that the events had taken a different course...
	Deer stepped on the boundaries people endorse...

	Copyright© 2006

--
Armenuhi Minassian was born in the village of Mughni in Ashtarak
District of Armenia. She's a graduate from the Yerevan State
University with a Masters degree in Armenian Language and Literature
and in Teaching.  For several years she worked as a teacher in #155
Secondary school of Yerevan. Armenouhi started to write poetry when
she was 10. Her first poem was broadcast by Armenian radio when she
was in the third grade. She received her first award for reading her
poetry in the Scholastic Olympics competition in 1966. Her first
article was published in the Ashtarak district Newspaper in 1972.

Armenoui migrated to the United States in 1993. In 2001, a collection
of her poetry was published in Los Angeles under the title "Veratsnund".
Her poems have appeared in "Hi Life", "Asbarez", "Azdarar", "New
Mirage Quarterly" and in several anthologies including "The Best Poets
and Poems of 2002". Her new poetry collection "Mundane Yearnings",
written in Armenian, is ready for publication. Recently she started to
write song lyrics both in English and Armenian.