heat lightning
an armadillo skitters
into a ditch

Inside of me
Bison are stampeding
Across caves

chimpanzees whisper:
they're just
like us

the donkey foal’s world a field in flood

ice moon—
an elk touches its tongue
to the salt lick

wires-crossed
the flying fox forever
folds into night

autumn afternoon
where the epileptic fell
a fresh groundhog den

The hyena:
outside of night—
laughing.

ibex
cracking horns—
the woodcutter’s axe

With lines of light
the sun invents jaguars
in the gardens.

new rain . . .
the odour of kangaroos
from the hollow

The air spotted by
a speeding leopard.

behind the mink
the moon has come
to pieces

morning sun—
fish scales glisten
in the otter scat

porcupine grooming
not a threat
out of place

A rat falls
into the water jar—
the cold night

skunk’s stripe
first moments
of darkness

A tiger
rearranges
suburban streets

a vole
in the watering can
again cloudless

a new world of snow . . .
stitching it all together
tracks of a weasel

Even in this snow,
the sound of the wolverine
is a bright red shriek.

free of the plow
the oxen move to the barn
side by side

a yak grazes
on winter stubble—
Everest’s shadow

Among the striped shadows
of his cage—
the zebra

the twists
in old coyote shit
Autumn wind

hippo—
up to its eyes
in weightlessness

cool autumn
the slow grazing of a horse
in a field of horses

a marmot’s whistle
pierces the mountain—
first star

firelit cave—
the sketch of a buffalo herd
starts to move

sniffing his dump
delicately . . .
elephant

the hemming fence
must be magic too . . .
captive unicorn