Swift as the hunter is subtle the reindeer is fleet

Swift as the hunter is subtle   the reindeer is fleet.

Lush as the honey she suckles   the queen-bee is sweet.

            Soundless today but for the sounds of local living

            by those too small to heed another noise.

Baked as a bun in the oven   the brick sitting suns,

stréaked with blate   white   as a street  waves    the brook-water runs.

Bereft as a river in winter    the mourning doves sing

in a   soft as the low clouds are lofty   sad song to the spring.

            Far as the eyrie    precarious upon a pinnacle

            wings  the eagle    balancing aloft a wind.

Bright as a butterly's coloured    the chrysalis spins

by a   thin as the thorax is timid   thread,    gently in wind.

As lean as a finger is crooked,  the millipede crawls

on the rim of these   brick as a river is    back-garden walls.

Bent as a boat to the task  wends the ant through the dew,

fálling down, violent and tiny, and rising anew.

Rash as his hunger is lovely   the bumblebee stings

falling     dead as the  red as an orchid   flesh     wretchedly wrings.

Yet what is that new scent upon the wind,

            as were danger a flower?

            The doe has sniffed the smell of him

            whose hand would bow her.

Hushed as the lace of a coverlet   borders the woods

upon   green as the season is grasslike   sweet cloverful field.

Tough in the trunk of the oak   bark grows tempered as teak;

corrupted as sponge   stigmas yield  neath the hummingbird's beak.

Crouching, senses tensing, he is nearing her now

            Sniffing, sensing, drawing the bow…           

-- Rushed   for the hunter is running   the reindeer now flees,

while   hushed as the petal is supple    buzz  humming  the bees.

            The hunter blunders blindly in a rush

            to track the doe whose high hoof gores the bush.           

Seeker… sought… and some one other thing…

            Then lo  as from the woods she bounds

            the doe is frozen:  for the sun has seized the scene.

            Nor does such as herself  would seize

            (whose boot  one last dark root   treads   as he leaves the leaves)

            'scape seizure: sun-seized equally

            ev-er-y-thing.

As subtly and as quickly as the deer   now rusts his gun;

the hunter ages eighty years; his bones bake in the sun.

The doe draws up in sunlight, and her eyes in query blink.

The noble neck untenses, by the stream she droops to drink.

All memory of chase now fades, for danger now is passed.

Protected from all age she grazes,  timeless as the grass.

[A note on prosody:

The initial, unindented couplets  are of eight beats each:

Five dactylic, and three of silence.

The indented lines  have no meter, save that of speech, or thought.

For an example of dactylic pentameter (an isolated line in an otherwise speech-timed prose-poem by Whitman):

   Nature  now without check, with original energy.

The language of the poem  is only-somewhat-older English,

mixed with a bit of

prenominal-descriptor-pileup

German.]

[As for the state of mind here embodied, cf. this:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/07/schroedingers-cat.html ]