For years, my grandfather shared
his garden with a rare gray fox.

As he piddled about, the fox
watched from the wood’s edge,

in enfleshed silence,
following every slow movement

my grandfather made.
Once he died, we neglected

his garden, a filigree
of dried vines on rusted cages.

The fox puttered about his own
sweet business in those eroded rows.

Last night, while walking
I was suddenly startled

by a soft sound in the grass—
here, in the fold of the garden,

a mother fox and her skulk
of young kit bed down.

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