Slivers of fox shriek
pierce a starless vast.
Along the outskirts
of a groaning wood,
I gather the year’s
pyre tinder,
as we who remain
remain to cull.
Throughout the night,
somewhere near
someone grinds
an axe on a wheel.
Brett Harrington's poems have appeared in The Shore Poetry, Third Coast,
The Inflectionist Review and Bluestem. He was a finalist for the 2012 Best
of the Net and lives in the Rogue Valley in southern Oregon.