Prayer to the Red Fox Who Appeared Near the August Blue Moon, 2023
Like you, I’ve looked for answers in fox tracks.
—Eric Pankey
Walking dusk along this mountain
road—the moon bloated, two days
from full—I felt an inexplicable urge
to turn and walk the other way.
And there she was, a red fox,
not more than twenty yards
before me, which had been behind.
Her tail fluffed and full.
She had emerged from out of the rabbitbrush,
the cheatgrass, thinking I had passed.
I stopped. She stopped. Quail flutter
in my throat. We stared into one another
and through. The long years
for which we had both longed
hung there between us.
I touched my chest, rubbing my palm
in prayer across it, over my heart. And again.
More deeply. I wanted to bow before her,
bend and kneel, take the dusk’s
dust, carve the gravel of this mountain road
deep into my bones.
I wish my life. I wish parts gone—
all the tearing apart. The terrible, the torn.
I wish I could have taken in her
delicacy—her shedding, her rust.
The way she paused, lifted a paw,
and looked long into me. Taken her
forepaws into my palms
and kissed them, tenderly,
over and over. Over and again.
Through the cavernous depth of the dark,
the deepening dark of my dark,
until the moon blistered me
with its cold breach of snow, crawling forth
my shadow. The moon emptying
me as it bent back the night
and went fully. Full. |
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