He takes wine as a child takes milk
and makes a red fox run under the moon.
A few things that comfort—cloves,
cinnamon, ginger. Soft fruits
and the plain speech of a tiger’s purr.
He has come, like a donkey or a mule,
to this garden believing in fury
to calm and simplify the slaughter
with fatty marrow and gristle.
There is a life that outlives this one
but no scythe to chop the thickets, yet.
Make no mistake: he can cover distance
on the trail of a new scent
but labor and laws are blurred
with strange appetites.
Jona Colson’s poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. He is also the co-editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (2021). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review and elsewhere. His translations and interviews can be found in Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, and The Writer’s Chronicle. He is an associate professor of ESL at Montgomery College in Maryland and lives in Washington, DC.