Foraging

These are the loveliest hours of the day,
cold, so cold, but with a coming stillness

after the stars go shooting up the hill
and disappear into their wooden burrows.

I feel my body moving as it used
to move, my haunches strong, my lightest tracks

paced in the open. A spoor is memory.
I know, unlike the strangers, how a wood

is traceable by crossings in the snow,
the fading whiff of dung, tuft of snagged fur.

They do not see me even when they look.
I hear their heavy movements, mating calls.

When it is dark I move among their greens,
their frozen plantings, always good to taste,

and the strange smells and planets of their burrows.
I know they are dangers. I know my loves
...