Colony Collapse

In these woods my brother handed me a note. A white paper
sea sailing a black ship. I said to my brother What does this
mean? and he said There are no words and I repeated There are
no words but he was already a deer running back into the lake
of these woods. A rabbit crossed from trunk to trunk, a bird
from one umbrella of branches to another. My brother's note
cried out my dying. A single black dot on a square of white
meant that I was deathly, and my brother was a deer again,
turning tail. My feet were hooves, but I could not chase down
his reasons.