like a jeweller lost in the cellars of a diamond
no longer caring about getting back.
Curious, I kicked him over
exposing his black, wrinkled underbelly
like the face of a black person a century old
the little alien paws
like all things alien secretly human
the long, silver, jointed fingers
ripped from their contact with the earth
and his sooty squirrel’s face, so astonishingly small
under its mohawk of quills.
Later, driving off, I thought again of the porcupine —
how I had kicked over the hut of his privacy
broken his last dish
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