When the moon is full I watch
and watch for silver fire
low between wrapped branches.
Only I may hunt them.
Foxes in my vineyard are my foxes.

I hear them unscroll voices
in the summer, gristled thunder raking violence.
The vineyard’s midnight blossoms
are baby suns immature for light,
the cartilage of stars.

Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.

Who can help but dream of Heaven
in a vineyard’s firetower,
grazing foxes under midnight?
I cannot, so while I watch the foxes,
my vineyard fully bloomed is Heaven paused,
the stars in hibernation as the Dead go wild.

II: Down from the Tower of Fire

In deathlike dream, I, skypiercer,
claw atop the flaming tower,
sword into the lattice bones of space.
God is the Tower, death the climb,
and Heaven the fall into earth
as what I have loved.

My eyes are the moon re-stoned in jade
and light through clouds is a plume of ice.
I hide below the brambles,
listen to the flowers sing.

Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.

Petals constellate the scribbled rows.
There is love beneath the soil,
moles, rabbits, fieldmice gone deliciously to seed.
I tremble, sharply grin,
and my tongue dreams the sweetness
burrowed between roots.

I am the hunted thing hunting,
the shaft of fire is pillared salt,
and love is swallowed blood.

III: The Shot

Heaven recedes and I am shucked
from steaming fur, blasted back to flesh.
A snap and something slams, then screaming.

Darkness grows a metal jaw:
teeth surround the fox.
I flip a switch and halogen
blows through the fields.
The fox is ripped from silver,
now a bristled candlehead.

I kiss the bullet, load my rifle,
aim and carve the trigger back.
The flame claps still and twitches,
hardens into ember, cool among
the nodding flowers.

Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.

The rifle slants across my shoulder.
Eyelids lower, azure burns to green,
and I grin. My teeth dream to knives
as I await the smashing pin
to make my brain a blossomed cone,
unfurled flag to God, my beloved.