He lived all summer on the great man’s estate,
the red fox, like a concubine.
The sight of him taking the bait
made the old man tremble—
his modest toilette at the fountain
observed through binoculars,
his unmolested naps near the gray rock
where sunlight streamed through a dying birch.

Over and over the fox saw the old man hobble out
and fill the meat bowl. His was a pungent,
almost medical smell, that clung
like a tendril to the complicated air of human places.
At first each nerve objected. The fox
saw two dogs at the bay window, watching,
their coarse, domesticated faces
full of eager malevolence, like ex-wives.

Then overnight the sumac turned red.
The creeper suddenly blushed at its own rapaciousness.
How hard the wind tried to pick the trees up
but leaves only came away.
That summer, like all the others,
fled while the old man still wanted it, and the fox, too,
vanished into the copper-colored undergrowth
as into the magician’s sleeve.