Monday, July 6, 2015

Fox's Valentine (for Erin)

Those great flocks of passenger pigeons
still darken the sky but now invisibly
and those huge herds of so-called
extinct animals and birds of all kinds
still graze ethereal fields and forests
and even those new creatures
not yet bodied in the world
roam with them and the one fox
you saw first in a hunting mode
and then later in the mode of death
both of them are mirrored there
in the mind’s all-inclusive panorama
which still somehow feels so feeble
poorly-lit and bare compared
to this stone bridge and these
heavy feet strolling home over it

1 comment:

erin said...

i ran again yesterday, peter, the same route i did the day i met the fox. can you imagine that the world is actually structured in this way??! you know i found the fox late day dead on the other side of the bridge. well, it was yesterday as i mounted the top of the trail that i realized (or only remembered?) that it was coming back from the river and mounting this same hill on the other side that i first saw the fox at the graveyard. actually, between this small town's two graveyards on opposite sides of the road at the top of the hill. yes, it happens as casually as this. river. bridge. hill. graveyard. life and death. all the frenetic energy in between, around, beside, within. such an overwhelming weave.

it's difficult for me to respond to a poem which is right other than to say i love it.

i love it.