A white fox in the snow,
she was difficult
to spot: first the eyes
bright of copper
held wishes, tossed
between the bars,
every passing kindness
of good intent on the
long blank – was it
a cage she was born,
displaced –
too buried by the dog,
belonging as an old,
well-loved ball, forgotten
by time and inattention,
the haunting first and then
the self – how warm in
the thick-grown fur of
a wild thing. She slipped
the first prison, sliding
between two hard lines
by her own emaciation,
to fall tired where the snow
piled high on a bluff; she
sunk in its numbing, feeding
on passing birds. Until one day,
a hunter spotted those
unmistakable, pointed ears
turning in the wind, how
the eyes were halved
in careful dreaming –
and the fox, having
dreamt Possible before
possible was an action
especially of freedom –
quickly, made warm apples
of him, debriding his horror,
before he could take her skin.
This infection of violence
sent her walking again
and what looked like forever
was the curve of horizon
where she found softness
like the snow when first
fell, how it landed lightly
on the nose
before blanketing - to walk
on even below the passing
of clouds kept coming,
of winter or rebel storms.
Category: Current Writings
Surfside
A stone in the sand
dents me
at the edge of frailty –
I am of parts, jagged as
the coastline where
the tide pushed,
having gone far now
from the beginning
like my mother went
back, where waters were
warm, where the ocean
kept a song of us she
never stopped loving,
and she tried more than
many will need
having, on cruelty,
a softness she built up
and beneath it a knife
always ready;
sensing it there
held even in sleep,
the forced inattention to
giggle when she would laugh to
stay silent unless agreeing –
and I existed in fable
taking on too much water
and snapped as the rebar
too solid and needy broke,
and dropped in pieces
like every stone
left in places I felt free –
every bit of that old heart
except what gave purpose
left behind, grabbing
at leaves and sky, ravenous
feeling their immortality, their
constant warmth like
a mother’s love,
gone before it was gone.
Forced Evolution
The bus is late again
and sleep's been short
a tooth on the tongue
sharpened,
but hi, the weather x,
you say, and yes
to chocolate from
a stranger -
too sweet fluttering
the heart with its
refined sugar,
same how caught
on a train track
it raced and emptied
of self, knowing
how sleep snatches
in the long night
and never wakes,
but arrives
repeatedly into being
like every day since
as if an eddy on a wave
could change course.
So you let the bus
leave, made cold
and troubled
like a cobra poised
above its own center
on thresholds of violence
and mercy, and find instead
the warmth of a sunny rock
to count the petals
on clovers
in the weedy grass
could a crown of stems
beyond the ordinary
be made -
a root of self
tethered to its own
shaping - would this
woken dream, depart.
skipping stones 