Fox in the thorn-patch . . .
Shrill notes of a sheep’s horn billow down the hills
Crusted with shadows. Fetch the long rifle from the wall,
Draw ramrod and tallow-dipped rag through the slender shaft,
Awakening a dulled skill. Bring out the rusty bullet mold
With a finger of lead; blow a slow fire upon the cold hearth.
Shave the lead pellets to a good roundness ere the wildcat
Chills the night with his crying.
Call up the yawning hounds from the chimney’s warmth
Beneath the puncheon floor. Call up the dusty hounds
With a rasher of sow-belly and a greasy corn-pone
While fog loiters in the valleys and dark coves
Over blossoming elder and wine-red sumac,
And a swollen moon rides the sky-orchards.
Bright on the mountain the hunter’s fire strips darkness down
From quavering poplars fluting the night;
And slouched shadows wall the glow against a taller sky
Listening through the leaf-sounds. Listening:
The hills muffle the long crying; then suddenly clear
Over razor-back ridges comes a wild freshet of barking.
Hounds flow down the slope in a narrowing sweep
And up again in brown tidal strokes.
Their voices are the wild trumpets
Catching the night air for their blasting:
Thin, high-nasal, the young hounds with soft brown eyes
Burst into a stark tenor. Thunderous and earthy,
The bass-viol music of old hounds rends the damp air.
Gaunt and anxious, the swiftening pace
Flings the dogs clamoring down the trail
Where an odd prescience guiding padded feet shall fail
And a gum-stump mark the end of a perilous way.
In the stern interval when warm blood stains the earth
And the mellow banjos of the hounds’ throats are still,
A catamount cries the chilled and living day.