Death Takes Even Foxes

What's necessary vs. what's desirable. Well, death anyway, but in a manageable light. I gaze north through tangled hemlock limbs at dawn and remember what was lovely once, remember what was pure. For once the hay loft is quiet, its angles and declinations witness to what happens to any structure in the shaky box of time. At a point in my late twenties, foxes became a symbol of death but by my early fifties I could see that death takes even foxes. The temptation to make frost blossoms on the window a map of a sky I will see in another life. Between crosses, opening unto the end of anxiety, one begins again with incantations taught to them by the mothers. Remember fishing, the feeling of nibbles? How much is gone vs. how much remains: is that the way to frame it? I am haunted now by the man I did not become, chased by the one I will be. Here on the anvil, here in the sparks.