Dead Fox
We pretended to know nothing about it.
I withdrew to childhood training: stay out
of swampy undergrowth, choked edges.
This was around the time
we were too cruel to kill the mice we caught,
leaving them in the Have-a-Heart trap
under the sun-burning bramble of rugosa.
But moving up the trail, we caught a glimpse
right at the start: the fox just over the hillock
on the dune-side slope, spoiling
the grass-inscribed sand. Neither of us looked—
it seemed best to back away.
On the dune’s steep side
we surveyed what we’d come for: ocean’s
snaking blues beyond the meadow, the silvered
blade-like wands lying down. Lovely enough
to hold ourselves to that view.
But the currents of an odor wafted in and out,
until the sweep of smell grew wider, wilder.
The heat compounded, and ugliness
settled its cloud over us, profound as human speech,
although by then we were not speaking.
Copyright Credit: Cleopatra Mathis, “Dead Fox” from Book of Dog. Copyright © 2012 by Cleopatra Mathis. Reprinted by permission of Sarabande Books, Inc. www.sarabandebooks.org
Source: Book of Dog (Sarabande Books, 2012)