Whistling Fox

My father could whistle up a fox
with the bent lid of a jam tin.
Pursing his lips, he would blow the cries
of a wounded hare into cold Glen Innes hills,
Into a giant's marble game of balancing granite;
the wind-peeled stones on the tablelands 
of New England; a sound like a child
crying called the fox from its nest of skin and bones.

I was there the day my father blew
the eyes from a small red fox.
He fired, opened the shotgun over his knee,
and handed me two smoking shells.

It had come to us like any whistled dog,
leaving its padmarks in frosty grass.
That day it left its winter coat behind
with blood like rubies sown into the dripping hem.