sailing through saplings
claws clutching first one stem
swinging to another and another
paws grasping winter’s bare branches
tail dancing and switching
the giddy squirrel flung itself
into the berry bedecked holly nearby
deftly dodging the prickles
finally kicking with its back legs
launching onto a tall pine tree
scrambling up rough bark
stopping thirty feet off the ground
and barking at its competitor
parked on the poplar nearby
I had never thought of trees
as vertical obstacle courses
for athletic risk-taking squirrels
showing off their kinetic prowess
their giddy sciurid confidence
or was it joyful desperation
to navigate the world by vault
and leap from here to there
as fast as we can with as few
scratches and falls as possible
even then to rise and climb,
fall and roll, crawl, and run
around, across, over, under, and
straight through to the moment
when we must stop
Daun Daemon’s fiction has appeared in Flock, Dead Mule School, Literally Stories, and Delmarva Review among others, and she has published poems in Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Review, Remington Review, Deep South Magazine, Into the Void, Peeking Cat Literary, Amsterdam Quarterly, and other journals. Daemon is currently at work on a memoir in poetry as well as short stories inspired by memories of her mother’s home beauty shop. She teaches scientific communication at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband and two cats.
Foxglove Journal 