Two amber gems embedded in the flame

  Five points of cinder, perfect onyx ink

  Enfolding under-silk, unblemished shame

  Chest trembling with breath, rise, hold, and sink

  A question, whether blood or tears to drink

  The fox smoothed down his fur and flexed his claws

  A ray of sun through mist, pale parted jaws

  Ahead of Khazemil the ghost forms broke

  Wide tawny rolling oceans caught the light

  Behind, the village finally awoke

  Old faces fast to flutter out despite

  Long distant ages spent to earn their right

  Those timeless murmurs met the sullen fox

  Who only saw a world of golden stalks

  “So stoic like his father was before!”

  The creaking, trailing voice split hairline cracks—

  “He says ‘nothing to learn,’ but who needs more?”

  —and widened them quite gently with an ax.

  “What else? Hah! Choosing silver over flax!”

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  “Be quiet, ma, his ears are turned towards us.”

  “But I’m the one who made the robe! Such fuss.”

  And turning, Khazemil saw in array

  Each elder fox, the snowy, red, and tan

  Each older son, their ear-tips not yet gray

  His father stood in front as it began

  Both vicious arms outstretched to fullest span

  Aloft a tunic cut for one so lithe

  And gleaming in the other paw a scythe

  “For youth, for life, we long delay this time

  We see the truth and hide it from the pure

  ‘Thus passing, from sublime to seek sublime’

  Proverbial; the words begin to blur,

  But ‘life anew is living to endure.’”

  Emotion never strayed into the speech

  And neither fox could o’er the chasm reach

  Cold shot through Khazemil, touching the blade

  Life burst through Khazemil, and then the day

  As wisps of dreams so swiftly die waylaid

  As drifting smoke in wind is torn away

  The farm, the field, the life fled fast astray

  Within his chest heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat

  “My head? My robe! My mind is incomplete!”

  “‘To sleep, goodnight, tomorrow just the same!’

  What does it mean? Today I shed the frost

  That tinges youth who look to win a name

  Now scythe in paw, the recollection lost

  To hear ‘to sleep, tomorrow,’ what a cost!

  My trouble hides in midnight, dusk to dawn

  My life is lost in daylight, slipping, gone.”