Death of a Fox

                              Harnham Road, Salisbury

To see a wild fox twice in your life
is a lament worthy of words. The summer
your dad died, crane flies blazed in the green air,

and I stepped from the trail
where a svelte male slunk across Glen Cove Road.
The sun tangled amber in his tangy coat

and paintbrush tail. I paused as if a queen
shed ermine robes and stepped nude
onto glossy mats of roadside myrtle.

Then I reversed tracks and walked back
with nothing to say. This morning, rain finer
than despair glosses the twisted remains

of that animal’s English cousin where I round
a corner, thinking of other things—the body
mangled by savage automobile hounds,

teeth jutting like combs of angry ivory,
the slashed pelt sprinkled with a fine meal
of lilac blossoms, the glistening secret

of the hip joint as raw as steak,
tossed like a rough jewel for display on the foil
of wet tarmac. If there are answers

between you and me, one must be that each
morning of rain raises a ruined cathedral
of spired hours over love’s fascinating wreckage

and the carcass of every day, by which
I can pass but from which I can’t turn away.

A Small Thing

Loud geese revive the dark
      in August on Old Salt Road.
Dawn pours in grooves of bark
      a molten motherlode.

Acorn epics freefall
      from forest mezzanine.
Caps and capsules rattle
      parables of green.

Scarlet sumac candlesticks
      erect the many-in-one.
Ferrous doe and fawns make
      anecdotes of calm.

Keep Out. Private. Posted.
      Wilderness reversed.
Road Not Plowed or Sanded
      December to April First .

Raccoon shrinks in furrow clods,
      shines juvenile eyes.
Crow and seagull arcs explode
      like rafters of the sky.

A small thing is the greater.
      The storm, the swallow’s swerve.
The swiftest particle of light,
      the sun’s resounding curve.