Fox Illustrations

illustration by Jeanne Poland

before the pounce-is

the crouch…then fly on air-bear

down on butterfly!

Scent

illustrator: Jeanne Poland

furry scent of kin:

perfume-y  musk of the wild

waiting for cuddle

Paintbox

     illustration-Jeanne Poland

red-silver-cool-warm-coil

friendly foil-furry toil-soil’s

herbal comfort oil

Wild or Tame

illustrated by Jeanne Poland

A wild worried look-

or hope that trusts the touch

that feeds the needs: sees.

Foxes

red growls pierce the night

red fur spikes uptight-red light

calls to guard-to guard

Definition 355 Atmosphere

Equinox

by Barbara Crooker

Another October. The maples have done their slick trick
of turning yellow almost overnight; summer’s hazy skies
are cobalt blue. My friend has come in from the West,
where it’s been a year of no mercy: chemotherapy, bone
marrow transplant, more chemotherapy, and her hair
came out in fistfuls, twice. Bald as a pumpkin.
And then, the surgeon’s knife.
But she’s come through it all, annealed by fire,
calm settled in her bones like the morning mist in valleys
and low places, and her hair’s returned, glossy
as a horse chestnut kept in a shirt pocket.
Today a red fox ran down through the corn stubble;
he vanished like smoke. I want to praise things
that cannot last. The scarlet and orange leaves
are already gone, blown down by a cold rain,
crushed and trampled. They rise again in leaf meal
and wood smoke. The Great Blue Heron’s returned to the pond,
settles in the reeds like a steady flame.
Geese cut a wedge out of the sky, drag the gray days
behind them like a skein of old wool.
I want to praise everything brief and finite.
Overhead, the Pleiades fall into place; Orion rises.
Great Horned Owls muffle the night with their calls;
night falls swiftly, tucking us in her black velvet robe,
the stitches showing through, all those little lights,
our little lives, rising and falling.

“Equinox” by Barbara Crooker from Selected Poems. © Future Cycle Press, 2015. Reprinted with permission.