Plot Poem by David Roderick

The stones are grown over with moss,
canker-eaten, illegible even to the sun

leaving the outskirts of our land.
Cobbled fence. Property line that runs

into the pines, where my father tapped a stake
in the ground, tacked an orange marker.

Pumpkins and mums form autumn,
and the next season prepares itself

like a spirit slipping into the skin of an animal
for some private need, to save a favorite son.

Soon there will be only two things left,
meaning and snow-meaning, bitter choices,

the kind my ancestors needed to warm themselves
as ice lined the slats of their cottages.

Now I see older things developing from my spot
at this window, like space emptying light,

and the outline of a fox trotting along the far end
of our land, looking for something to kill.