Love Song of the Coywolf 

and I’ll be waxwing . . . — William Woolfitt 

Your name like the wild strawberry seed behind my first fang
& its green bone shedding 
hides in the roots. I have at night sometimes asked 
to say it
the one breath in this cold that might cover me until the rhododendron return 
to hold the stars up. After the morning shawl hems
the shadow of its clouded net
after stones frost in the riverlet I begin to make a place
for you 
between the candles of the wind shed branches,
your hide the first restless visit of light.