stopping breath (challenge revision)

it takes awhile to rest within the banks of winter you must thrash awhile to build a warm air against your watching stillness sitting at the tree but then the birds come and make a melting worthwhile for those hunting dance wrens squeak lasting queries and red bellied woodpeckers croak their bounding verse as our squirrels emerge pushing and pulling taught legs in yoga grooming to then mark and feed at the death of a cold snap and at their peril for the hawks and cats desperate now in the grey even the grey dogs howl at a sky empty bowl for that taste of their brother to feed their stories including the man who rockets his quieting to head numbing thuds while his sisters cry that we are not hawks or cats or like the coyote feeding their perspective with a book mined steel jawed trap that snaps up green from the birthing cries of woodchuck pups and fawns following the gentle plow of earth and fur carrying that old guard family repast beyond the counter fails to weep in the mirror of a bitch like the dog that he is eating his mistake dutifully and with a gusto that befits the taking for when it dies a body calls its bookmakers to the feast for all that write their own tickets to their own plays feed on their own words and throw the heads away Written February 5th, 2002 © on Feb 06 2002 12:45 AM PST, Frederic Jacob Gutknecht IV   10 • 0 • 9