Approach

by FRANCES FROST

AUTUMN’S red vixen, burnished in the dawn,
ventures the moss with cobwebs on her fur,
and drifts the ash-blue woods on silent paws,
seeking the gold-eyed fox to succor her

with love in loneliness. The leaves come down,
hot color in the hemlock shadow. Smoulder
of mountainsides about her as she runs,
she hears him barking from his secret boulder,

and halts on leaf-fall feet. Her shy heart faints;
trembling she waits in fern and juniper.
Scarcely touching the wood-grass, delicately,
a bronze leaf caught in his coat, he comes to her.