The Fox

Remember trying to feed the fox?
She said five feet is close enough.
Throw me something or put it on the ground
and go away. She favored a front paw.
You sat down. She sat down
so everything stopped, a wheel ceased
squeaking, firecracker caught open-
mouthed, the children froze around
the hospital bed, a minor chord sustained
who knows how, innumerable rain-
drops suspended midair becoming
conscious of their fate to be dashed down,
a song formed wholly at once just as wholly
vanished, phosphenes, starworks, dustshop
each must blunder off to in our time,
freed of love, without fuss, our orders
sketchy at best. Maybe one day the war
will end. Already soldiers come home
to hang themselves from rafters.
Their problem isn't having two hearts
or a ghost marriage or their voice
changing so they have to leave the chorus.
One day, the fox doesn't show.
That's as close as you'll ever get
but she's already figured out
how to appear in your dreams, just
not yet, not until you've stopped
being nervous at twilight. When Debussy
felt his opera going nowhere,
he let it.

Copyright © 2009 Dean Young All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission