Raccoon
This drift I found is deer-headed.
I pitch it at the shoreline as a totem.
Once a horse walked across the lake
to lift me up into rest for awhile. Then a live
deer parted the buckthorn, occupied
the yard from midnight to midnight.
Projected its vanishing into a lake–
felled cedar limb washed up at my feet.
Raccoon stole himself over my face,
masked me with his medicine. Everyone
has medicine–kinesthetic, culinary,
mathematical, stone, money, tree.
Some people might have horse medicine:
they have helped me. I don’t know why
I have raccoon medicine. I always
wished for the deer kind.
Sarah Fox
