Six a.m. and a ground hog
rests quietly on my driveway. 
Why is my first thought “He probably 
sees me”? If he did he’d no doubt
get up and just as quietly
waddle away. “Fellow creatures”
we humans call them, the animals
as they stand in the trees
staring at us, or quietly graze 
in the pasture next door. After all,
like us their blood is warm, 
their young are born alive
like ours, out of the soft womb, 
and kept alive with a mother’s milk. 
But that groundhog sees what I cannot
and is gone when I pour my coffee
and look again. The deer turn
when I take a step. And those sheep?
Why should they share my thoughts
any more than does the cricket
singing and warming herself
in some corner of my house? 
                        

against the house
brought the skunk,
every night skunk breath
insinuating its pungency
through the open
bedroom window and into
sleep.  Good thing the dog
was into his own sleep 
in the kitchen corner,
ignoring the midnight prowler.
Midnight feeder rather,
which is where the woodpile
comes in, as the site 
of an insect city
in the moist layers
of rotting logs no longer
headed to the fireplace,
but offering a different
form of nourishment, warming
a skunk with the grey
bodies of grubs. Moving the
woodpile laid waste the insect
colony and the skunk,
deprived of this
easy buffet,
took his black striped body
back into the woods.