by Sarah Wetzel

On the hill, what appears to be an earth
of foxes assembled along its ledge

a black and green forest drawing the night
with dark strokes. Warily

I walk toward where the animals
hide though higher among

the rubble of boulders of what seems
an abandoned fortress, a battlefield long lost

or perhaps, not yet fought, the moon
holding their mouths on a string

I’ve heard the foxes barking
under all kinds of skies

louder as I approach
and I’ve heard the story— how one

will come close, whining her welcome
and you and the dog you’re with

will have to follow
while over the hill, silently watching, the rest

of the earth
I step into the darkness, the leash loose

as the foxes fall silent
folding themselves into stones

Sarah Wetzel is the author of the poetry collections The Davids Inside David, recently released from Terrapin Books, River Electric with Light, which won the AROHO Poetry Publication Prize and was published by Red Hen Press in 2015, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, which won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press in 2010. She has a chapbook, Elegies of Herons, forthcoming from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press. When not shuttling between her two geographic loves—Rome, Italy and New York City—Sarah is Publisher and Editor at Saturnalia Books and a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature in the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. sarahwetzel.com.