“Bluebird Dreams of Red Fox”
Book Excerpt: Feller
Bluebird Dreams of Red Fox
And then as the eastern sky colors
like the skin of an over-ripened peach,
you appear — as if I conjured you —
pirouetting under my hemlock perch
with your death-kiss-is-beautiful kind
of allure — gangly, untamable, too proud —
and then you belly-creep home. I know
about your fatal fox magic, how you
open doors to new worlds, how you lure
hunters to fall in love with you. Could you
confound a bluebird, too, charming me
with your dance, pretending you can’t
hear me when I’m singing your name?
Copyright©️ 2025 by Denton Loving. Excerpted from Feller (Mercer University Press). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Denton Loving is the author of Crimes Against Birds and Tamp, which received the inaugural Tennessee Book Award for Poetry. He is a cofounder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Ecotone.
