Shut In
A villanelle, 'Shut In'. A seven-year-old shuts the hens in at dusk while a fox barks past the hedge. Two refrains, two rhymes, nineteen lines. One line changed after a cold read: I'd described the fox's bark with an image that belongs to its scream. A red fox's usual call is a three-to-five-note bark, heard most in midwinter, so the yelps stayed and the torn cloth went.
Shut In
Shut in the hens before it's fully dark. They put themselves to bed. You do the door. Out past the hedge a fox begins to bark.
She's seven, and her torch makes one white mark that swings from post to puddle. It's her chore. Shut in the hens before it's fully dark.
The hens are in already. In the ark they've shuffled up along the perch, all four. Out past the hedge a fox begins to bark.
She's never heard one. Three short yelps, a stark hoarse sound, a dog that's never barked before. Shut in the hens before it's fully dark.
She lets the hatch slide shut. A low remark from somewhere on the perch, then nothing more. Out past the hedge a fox begins to bark.
She walks back past the plum tree's wet black bark, not running. Her dad doesn't ask. What for? Shut in the hens before it's fully dark. Out past the hedge a fox begins to bark.
A villanelle: two refrains, two rhymes, nineteen lines.