Porcupine

Porcupine · Steve Orlen One of the animals at midnight wakes And starts out of his bushy house In a hurry to regain the earth. The moon, which lights his usual path Through poison ivy and blackberry, Is no longer moving, is trying to gain Some time. I look out my window At the sleeping earth quilted with snow And mud, and see the porcupine Dressed in his coarse bulk Lumber across the road. His eyes shine. The pond is frozen, and he sets Out upon it saying nothing, Because to whom would a porcupine speak, Though he lives a serious and busy life. I talk aloud because it is after midnight, And tell him he loves the poor, patched woods Around the pond, tell him he'll get there In his own sweet time, though what He nightly does, a prickly cathedral Wandering over the weeds, I can't guess. In the morning when I start out to walk his walk I find Beyond the pond some blood in snow, Though he's no carnivore, Some tracks in mud, which is the privilege Of the nightly walker, one of the few To leave his true image in an icy pond, An image that just before midnight Will wake me up again and breathe Into me a small, seductive fire. The Missouri Review ¦ 29 ...