Fox hunters have a ritual of blooding a new hound's face
After the first kill. The dog is stained with fox blood.
It is a rite of passage, at least in the hunter's mind.
The dog's mind is like the frequencies we cannot hear.
Like the bone in the hip of the autumn rose
After flowers are a long-dead dream.
As for the fox who spilled the dark-drying blood,
Those frequencies are beyond even the dog's mind.
There is no whistle the red scraps will ever hear
To bring them into the pack that rose
Up and ran, legs swimming in a dream,
Away from the bloodied face.
I know, it is presumptuous to speculate on a fox's mind,
But at night, a continuous, cricket-like note, I still hear.
Without desire or consciousness, these thoughts rose
Out of the woods and entered the shadows of my dream
And climbed inside the bones behind my face.
The pain of the hunted is now in my blood.
Why do I bother to bring this here,
replete with pixilated, digital rose?
It is a circuitous electrical dream
That has entered through your face
And swims now in your blood
Toward the heart of your open mind.
You may, if you wish, pluck the rose;
Or travel down the dharma of a dream;
Or, thin as a mirror, see my face;
the lines of my blood,
the back of my mind;
or even the note that I hear.
But in truth this is but the surface of a deeper dream:
The one that has helped create the lines in your face;
The one that follows down the lines of your blood;
It has grown over time in your mind
To be the only music that you hear
Inside the hip, under the rose.
But reality is something we all face, even those who live in their mind.
The metaphorical rose is drained of summer-red blood,
Though in winter, you can hear the digital cricket of a dream.
