Wilder-born

A white fox
in snow –

she was difficult

to spot: first
the eyes too

bright of copper
like coins tossed

between the bars,
long blank –

it was a cage
she was born to

displaced by avalanche,

to be like a toy
buried by the dog,

how it belongs to one –
who will know it exists

coveted, kept low
in haunting torpor,

until made smallest
by time and inattention

both the haunting first
and then the self,

slipped the first prison,
but by the own

walked to where
the snow had piled

to sink in icy balm

until one day, a hunter
saw her by her shape:

the two pointed ears
that beckoned,

eyes lidded in
careful dreaming

and the fox, having
dreamt many

stories like, to be
a young girl, of him

made warm apples
in her teeth

melting what was frozen
deep in the gut,

and the shock of warmth
sent her running –

away – what looked
like forever was

the curve of horizon,

until as imagined
in first memory

before the sudden world –

she knew then softness
like the snow, once

only an endless cold,

could be light on her
nose when first fell –

and would pause in every place
such, to gather more of

all not like the other –

it was a springtime
the wild first flowered

beneath the peek of that
long-coming sun.