For A.K.S.
One morning at least fifty foxes
crossed Mead’s pasture together
and passed through
the fence like a vapor.
I stood shuddering;
but of that red,
a claw and a comb of fur
were all I touched.
That was how time was, then;
the meadowlike present,
being so flat, bored you
but the coming weeks
refused to come.
I shivered in them
as if inside a fog of foxes
whose misstepped paws
were the moments I could catch.
Once I’d weathered those
pawlike days, I wore the scars of my
maturity proudly; such things
were harder won when I was old.