Clade Song 15

Fox’s Song

The day Fox sang her song
the sun sloughed off its winter husk and warmed the ground.
On that day Fox saw a reflection in the pond
of every spangling spawning thing in the measure of her sight.
Something like love plays a melody—
Fox sings of a touch that sends the air rushing ahead of her,
the moon in a sail of clouds, time in its scattered whorl.
The breeze in the cottonwoods sighs to the stream
that sings by day and night a meandering song of life eternal.
Fox spins out a song of chortling whiffs of spring
rings of water, clouds and sky—
the inklings of wakened creatures fold in their back-beat hum,
ducks rising from the pond are harmonies
taking wing in a whirlwind of cries.

P. V. Beck is a poet from northern New Mexico whose most recent work traces the terrain over which a Gray fox wanders through the seasons and the wits by which the fox navigates a radically changing habitat.These poems and others, as well as essays on the fool and consciousness appear in a wide variety of journals and magazines. She is the author of The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life; and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the multi-media project, Oremos, Oremos: New Mexican Midwinter Masquerades. She restores and chronicles the phenology of riparian habitats in her mountain watershed. Her recent album of tunes, The Wild Path: Twelve Waltzes and a Jig, is at bandcamp.com.