Prey Drive
Beneath the snow, the field flirts, stunning in
hawk’s feather, beeswax, oatmeal puddled with milk.
A few ice-shriveled husks leak milkweed silk.
Mice tunnel lumpy veins through frozen roots.
Off-leash, my soft-eared shadow noses each
entrance a rich wound (I compare this year’s
snowfall to the past—the same, a little less?)
Suddenly, the dog transforms:
a fox’s toothy
arch-backed pounce, coyote’s famished joy—
the mouse tail disappears, gulped down.
This same animal sleeps burrowed in my bed,
cinnamon eyes. He licked my hands this morning.
(Was he already dreaming of the chase?)
We head back to the car, our daylight swallowed fast.
What watches from the prairie’s matted edge?
Circled by a hushed bright tapestry of eyes.
Judge’s Comments —
I so admire the precision of imagery in “Prey Drive” (“Mice tunnel lumpy veins through frozen roots.”) and how deftly the camera zooms in on the dog’s pounce (meter shifting here) before zooming back out to “the prairie’s matted edge.” The sonnet form, and its stretching, complements this meditation on the threshold of domestic and wild.
— Laura Donnelly