In the distant, wild lands, blood soaks into the white,
freezing temperatures penetrate through layers of
fur and fat with ease, and the howling winds do well
to hide the screams of fallen mothers and fathers.
The weak ones’ pleas fall deaf
on the whims of the strong's teeth.
Soft furred bellies rub against the cold, a mother
kisses her child’s fur straight.
All the while a fox stalks on, the wind
hiding its growling stomach well.
He licks his lips and shakes his hips at
the keen anticipation of a moment’s strike.
A mother, attuned, turns and screams, fury and
hatred reflected in the monster's teeth, a pallid white.
Cottontail martyrs try to leap with their dangling legs,
dragging their muddy feet through the
gashes shaped like dead angels on padded snow, forever
imprinted on burial mounds, that restful twinkle from their
glossy eyes fading for every
wheeze, wheeze, wheeze—
strangled by the blizzard breeze.
The stronger eat the strong,
the weak eat the weaker.
For every hare crippled
on a whim, a fox is sustained
by their pleas.
Akin to hellwhirls—they devour.
Like devils—we persevere.
It had to be this way.
