untitled winter 07

Crow, feasting on the entrails of fox roadkill.

Crow:

Fox, I'll stick my beak where I wish,
and you'll do nothing about it.

Fox:

Crow, don't gloat. Could I catch you
between my teeth, you'd be chicken.
Who raids, after all, the hen-house?
cons fowl, my kills fresh, unlike yours?
Had you guts enough to pounce.
Try my living counterpart
on a level field.

Though you roped a dope,
already I was down.

Crow:

So roadkill's roadkill. Half my job's
to clean these roads or raid the owl's nests.
Shiny aluminum animals, big winged fish,
with more eyes than a leopard has spots,
monitor my progress, my hapless petit pooch,
skittish, proud, slant-eyed mix of weasel/dog
without the grasp of coyote or the fisher's strength,
little doggie at which bigger doggies bay.

Dainty-foot, ski-slope-snouted vulpes,
you're the roadkill catch for today.

Fox:

And what above beclouds my clouded eye?
I tried to cross the road, ending on the other side.
When light froze.

Crow:

Ever pecked fresh snapper?
Good in season, but hard to get at.
You an inverse problem.
Too much of you I can't drag to the guard-rail.
Is a cousin raven in the house?

Fox:

--from the start too big a room
through which I moved.