Heart Machine

For days the wind has thrashed the woodland.

Stripped branches whip at an angry sky,

a pool spins in a kaleidoscope of leaves.

In the dark, behind a fallen branch,

a fox senses the stillness yet to arrive.

He lies low, his heart a machine, beating

against his bed of wing-feathers and small bones.

The wind plays a different tune and the pool

slows to the silent sound of drowning.

Concealed in a cloak of leaves, a vixen drinks

from a cloud’s reflection, each sip rippling

the silence. The fox moves quiet as a shadow;

to get to his beloved, his heart machine quickens.

He hesitates, feeling the chill of a human eye.

Like the snap of a dry twig, a pin strikes a cartridge;

and his senses implode into a moment of pain!

In the pool, the heart machine pumps out its blood -

the cry of fondness caught in a swirl of numbness.

… and the helpless heart slows to the silent sound of drowning, 

as if engulfed in a perpetual whirlpool …