The subject of the grave is helping dig it.
          Another game, to him.
          My aching fly-nipped limbs
heave up the earth, the stones, the thorns, the thicket.
          Save this glimpse

of black silk ears and snowy feathered paws;
          the chilly, seeking nose.
          Tomorrow will enclose
this beautiful deformity whose jaws
          betrayed us both.

A bite on the hand that feeds, shatters.
     Such shifts are the shaft
     and the shock of the knife
we never expect from the hand that
           is feeding us life.