Fox’s world is a circle that spirals from dawn 
 through the sleeping heat of the day into dusk.
 And when the moon lifts up light from the pond 
 Fox journeys with her shadow through the night.
 She follows a compass track—
 she knows its smells, its rabbit logs, its prairie dogs,
 knows where the moonlight scratches at a ravine’s hidden quarry. 
 There is an arc to her life, an ancient melody.
 In a distant harbor fir trees are stacked on wharves 
 then sheared into lumber for houses on rounded hills 
 in subdivisions whose roads were once winding rivers.
 In Fox’s world butterfly wings are lazy triangles 
 Opening and closing on the lips of flowers—
 Fox’s ears, trout’s tail, bird’s beak 
 And cougar’s tooth evolved the old way 
 not like the mark of merchants’ boots trampling on the vintage
 generals wielding their sword tips
 henchmen slinging the bite of their saw blades against the grain.