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 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.