Fox in the Landscape

Tulip, you   

Bled on my green rug.   

A jungle-red petal   

Where my little kits   

Rollick, fallen like a warning—   

Yesterday I sat outside   

In the returned sun   

Trying to make more   

Friends; after all these years   

To think of yourself   

Snapped, the sweet sap   

Tremoring between   

States of ice and melt.   

An old love wrote to me   

From his wife’s country place   

To say he had been hunting there   

And could appreciate the hounds;   

In a white coat he is closely   

Setting people’s bones, opening   

Their backs with the hands   

I knew   

The cancellated paths   

Of saying no or yes: I could have fallen

To a fearing of the little foxes lately   

Come into the yard   

(There is so little I know about what to do)   

But I let them be.