with

with steller jay tap tapping at the window for peanuts, telling me weather’s cooling, winter comes.

with the line climbing the snowy mountainside, six in a row, black wolves.

with gazelle chased by cheetah, both so fleet, me saying no while my son says go.

with thin black cat laying two small fish on our doorstep for her kittens inside.

with my nephew’s snake my young son holds in both hands.

with small black beetle whispering into the rock around my pansies.

with grosbeak’s song tumbling light as dry snow down through the trees, asking for sunflower seeds.

with ground squirrel kits whose chatter reverberates through derelict gold mine pipe they make home.

with pulsating orbs of white spread below my kayak, a gathering of moon jellies, mirroring sky’s clouds.

with three black snakes sunning together on a boulder in springtime woods.

with the spray of their exhale misting my face as two humpbacks leap from glowing seas.

with a dangling thread just before my eyes, inchworm hanging from the willow, green U-turning.

with adopted sun conure, whose shrieks still rainbow my ear though I regret not a moment of him on my shoulder, nibbling strands of my hair.

with small black puppy at Om beach, gnawing on a dead crab, the sacred bloated cow nuzzling a pile of trash nearby.

with black dog at my feet, soft groan as I stroke the silk of her back.

with river otters tumbling over one another along the barnacled shoreline, one head lifting when my shutter clicks.

with night bunny under the roses, beautiful bones ticking time’s soft rhythm.

with black bear searching in hungry spring for birdseed we miss, batting at the garden hose, down on forearms to lap from the dogs’ water bowl.

with the baby gang, chickadee nuthatch junco newly fledged, alighting in birch, learning the bird bath.

with bats, circling, at dusk, my head, dancing to my runner’s high.

with gray squirrel high in the oak, scrambling to avoid the beebee shots of neighbor boys my mother chases, screaming, from our backyard.

with my husky racing over tundra like blossoming wind, quick becoming small as a seed.

with pair of mountain goats pressed against cliffs lining Crow Pass, watching hikers toil.

with two frogs under the lilacs, one who lived two decades, our own tuck everlasting.

with red fox trotting by our tent in the Arctic summer night, red tongue out, panting, so light-footed she leaves no prints in soft mud.

with bumblebee bouncing off the window, wanting the colors of flowers my walls wear.

with polar bear pushing black snout against the window I raise just in time, leaving in dusty glass a single paw print, shimmer by the night’s aurora.

with king salmon in the stream, termination dust on their dorsals slowing tails to list into gentler current.

with the rolling thunder of hooves across my dreams,
the licks of a thousand rough tongues,
the harmony of songs lifted to limitless blue,
every day and night, world without end.