Raccoon

"Wild" means alien, not like us,
but it also means: more like us
than we want to know--

what we can't help knowing
instantly when anything looks at
us, not our eyes, but us.

Whatever can find us is of us. But
we have to draw the line somewhere.
After all, they eat each other.

I eat meat, wear fur hats
and uproot weeds (though when they
resist, I feel it's me they resist).

Many men and women have been killed
with my tax money. No wonder,
brother raccoon, you grip the branch,

almost meld with it,
with that tenacious shyness
we call "wild".

Dean Blehert