is a room filled with light and air,

then glass, which makes both of us

feel safe, so he can stand in the gravel,

light shivering along his gray and

cinnamon sleek coat, even the light-

starved underbelly thronged by particles

or waves of reflected light--but that’s

the science of the thing and science

never could explain beauty--which has

no survival value unless it keeps

us alert, here among the scattered bones

of leaves and poems, so that when the fox

slips into pineshadow, then emerges,

reshaping the morning with his thin snout

and tufted ears, he is a new kind of beautiful,

and then, almost the yellowing field

himself, he floats as if blown

across the stretch of meadowgrass

and wind, to slip behind the tree

he seems at first, intent on climbing,

tilting his head up, then back at me,

then up, until whatever beauty he sees

has turned, as it always must,

to danger, and he trots gingerly off.