09/14/10

Fox in the Road, Morning

The water of the low-lying creek
weighs down this fold of land
like a woman lying on a soft, well-used bed,
or on an upholstered divan;
mist, like the woman's weary arm,
gestures low in the air.

The air above the creek hollow is bright,
translucent as weak tea,
though with the low, late-summer mist,
it should be rubbing things muzzy,
indistinct; instead, the air
like the lens of a telescope
enlarges and sharpens the oak,
the boxelder, the dispersing moths,
even the grey asphalt’s pebbles,
rendering them startlingly
close.

The vixen, whose momentary birth
from the boxelder opposite
I did not see,
lopes undisturbed uphill
in the moment’s quiet
to the nearer curb,
slender black legs undulating
with the economy of a centipede’s,
though she’s less rich of them.
Her golden coat glides
over the roadway, an unexpected,
unmistakable halo.

Haloed, she could be a saint
in a moving diptych;
my beggar's heart, rent by her beauty,
she also miraculously
restores.

But wild creature, she is on her strict
morning commute. She cants in her path,
darts effortlessly into the scrub,
and I see on the roadway, the far side
of the mist, that my bus
may be coming.