Electric hairball lumping up, down oak bark
with a blood-full, white-skinned tail behind.

He lurches across the crept porch, carrying
sharded, razor ivory in tiny jaws.

Nosing the dirt, he crunches shells, acorn, thorax.
Ears curl like ribbons to bug-leg, silver-wing.

Below, the dark-berried, sambucus head offers
nothing but sensory pulse, microphoning

into his corpulent bag of bone-pick and skin.
In a tunnel, he smells forward being,

where he should be—a nocturnal flame
urgently pattering toward hungry repetitions,

fed and swallowed in earth’s pouch.