I am a fox. I eat the snow.
The endowment of a warped forest
What steams humid in the deep
Deep winter. Salt dust like shepherd’s tears
You never had patience for that.
Crystal stream-looks and stolen-throat dreams
Tattoos of fish dances, bullets
Coffee against foggy windowpanes:
I am forgotten. I sleep wild.
Crepuscular. Duskrogue. Furred Loki.
You sandman, stole fast my two hearts
Away on grass-shod, grainy plains green
Hung like heartfruit strung high upon
Pine boughs, drip-red and pulp, cosmic.
One heart my fractal fae, one my
Fragmented faith. I wake in fern blades.
I wake in gray. I eat the snow.
I cannot hunt for what-I-once-was.
Sunset speakers trill the night-song
Twilight makers, their clay biceps taut
Haul dewy stars through falling black
Leave no prints in fresh powder, my white
Tails beneath ethereal feet–
You saw me once, a long time ago
But you had no time for that. You
Had gems, had stones, had cake to study
And I, end-day hunter, seldom
Crossed your path. You saw me in the stream
In the eddying pool where deep
Water grows, you saw me reflected
Shallow prowler, playing in words.
I eat the snow, the ink beneath. You,
Guest in this forest, fresh from your
Concrete and glass, iron and brass. Take
Me in your pocket, take me in
Your jaws, watch me pad down kept lawns
See me through grocery-store glass.
A long time ago, I would have gone
Cold, a long time ago, I would
Have gone blind. I walk slow, hunt finches.
Hunt redbirds, race fieldmice, outrun
Other soft-padded winter hunters.
The fruit in my chest grows thick. Fig
And apple. Not native to this vale.
I stole the souls of six stories
Slid their clean bones between brick and stone
Shored up the cellars, dried the words
Saved to season a season away.
I think, I think, if you were to
Skin me, else shear my harefur like sheep
You’d see a wilding path, a map,
An impossibility. I am
A fox. I eat the snow and ink.
Modern Fantastic 