At sixteen, seeing that soldier majorette so

bold and sure as she led the high school

marching band down the town’s parade route

in white hat, gloves and boots with tassels,

“And the wolf shall dwell

with the lamb”, Isaiah 11:6

I spotted it in the grassy clearing

in a back-pocket park I’d go to for

the cork-carpet trails more forgiving

to bones and joints. It was a fox, it

A flock of common house sparrows, hundreds

of them, roll up high overhead as I walk across

the parking lot clinging to my cup of joe early

Was early morning, early January,

the monotony of snow-cover

was broken by grassy shoals 

here and there across the lawn

after a two-week warm spell.

I see him through a buttonhole of blue

as I cross the parking lot, up there on

a pinnacle perch on a lone dead branch

You keep pace with me walking

alongside you tippling helpless

in the snow-melt drink running

downstream with flood vengeance,