The old Fox Squirrel
playing clean-up crew
under my back-yard-bird-feeders
and I
have a budding relationship.
(Not exactly mishpouka,
yet,
but gradually,
we’re getting close)

He no longer runs
when I walk outside
through the back-porch-door.
(That was in the beginning,
when we were just
introducing ourselves…)

Now he squats in the pine straw,
a meditating, mendicate monk,
while I fill the feeders.
Then he calmly munches
on some spilled seed and suet on the ground
fussy cardinals tossed around,
“three for one”
before they chose the best
and flit off to eat them in their nest.

On hot Carolina mornings,
Foxxy doesn’t mind if,
when I am changing the water
in the bird baths
with the garden hose,
I turn the gentle spray on him.
I believe he appreciates the cool shower.
(Well, at least he doesn’t bolt into the wood-line!)

Why, as a matter of fact,
just this afternoon,
as he nosed around for crumbs,
and I checked the green metal suet holders,
I borrowed a handful
of black-oil sunflower seeds
from the full feeders,
bent down and offered it to him
from my hand.
He squirreled around my bent body,
but took to long before
my knee and back ached too much
to hold the pose.
So, I just tossed the seeds at him.
They bounced off his nose.
(He was just two feet away.)
Yet, as I creaked back up to vertical,
he didn’t budge.

Time and trust.
(Like anything good between old souls)
Time and trust
are the only must.

Maybe tomorrow,
just before dusk,
Foxxy will nibble seed from my hand,
hop up on the bird bath ledge,
straddle the edge,
dangle his right legs in the cool water
and start to teach me of his life
up in the branches and down in the dust.