Fox listens to what the creek whispers across the valley before dawn,
a riddle that pulls at the threads of her fragile world
the places she roams at the ragged edge of a broken circle
under a sun that wrings the last drops from old springs,
shrinks the pond, and makes the seasons sing off key.
Winding through shadow and sunlight
Fox’s spring creek shudders, trips, and falls
surface riffling, spider webs tingled with dew.
Imagine this creek with its ecstatic sloppiness,
its bog and swamp and burnt over mountains,
its head and tail, its imprinted canyons—
an unbroken circle of drought and rain,
cartwheel of fortune slip-sliding down a caterwaul of faith
onto an eternal alluvial plain.
