Tag: evolution

A white fox in the snow,
she was difficult

to spot: first the eyes
bright of copper

held wishes, tossed
between the bars, 

every passing kindness
of good intent on the

long blank – was it

a cage she was born,
displaced –

too buried by the dog,
belonging as an old, 

well-loved ball, forgotten 
by time and inattention,

the haunting first and then
the self – how warm in

the thick-grown fur of
a wild thing. She slipped

the first prison, sliding 
between two hard lines

by her own emaciation,
to fall tired where the snow

piled high on a bluff; she 
sunk in its numbing, feeding 

on passing birds. Until one day,
a hunter spotted those 
unmistakable, pointed ears

turning in the wind, how
the eyes were halved

in careful dreaming –
and the fox, having

dreamt Possible before
possible was an action

especially of freedom –
quickly, made warm apples
of him, debriding his horror,

before he could take her skin.

This infection of violence
sent her walking again

and what looked like forever 
was the curve of horizon

where she found softness
like the snow when first

fell, how it landed lightly
on the nose

before blanketing - to walk 
on even below the passing 

of clouds kept coming,
of winter or rebel storms.