The Lost Word

I know it cold, the scene in the woods, the grey-toned sky, and snow— the sudden clearing in the underbrush

through which a fox now steps, her auburn brush a-ziggety-zagging, as if she would erase her trail, though her tracks in the snow

are already lost in the layers of snow now spackling the hemlocks, the woodrush, the blackthorn and bracken, the half-seen woods,

the snow-brushed woods.