BY P.V. BECK
Fox Wakes to Cranes
Fox’s world lies under a fly line where birds navigate the ineffable
on a magnetic current emanating from the pulse of stars.
In the faint light of a fall morning
Fox wakes to the unearthly yelp of sandhill cranes,
distant specks in the sky wavering south above the Rio Grande
a dark blue vein threading a watery warp through the cranes’ celestial map.
The lead falters, the flock wheels around in a scatter of flapping wings.
Do they see a resting place, a delta, a harvested field of grain—
or has the tell-tale tied to their genetic mast become loose,
snatched away by the glittering trash heaps of endless cities.
The lead slowly wheels south again in a sweeping compassed sign
and the cranes realign into their morphing hieroglyph.
Fox falls asleep as their honking fades in a scribble on the horizon,
brush strokes of a rite of passage shaped by primordial cries.
Tightrope Walker
Fox is a tight-rope walker honing the patterns of a sentient world— a mote in the eye of all night hunters
a fleck who darts from tree to tree
wary of creaks and moans and owls’ airy feathers.
Her invisible enemy is the dumbed down steel trap
hidden under bushes with its jaws open.
Collapsing the waypoints of fear
the trapper plays by no animal rules,
his trap has no give and take, no play, no instinct to run.
Traps turn Fox’s world upside down—
the trap, not Fox, huddles in its hiding place,
the trap, not Fox, waits out its stalker.
A gleam of metal makes Fox skirt an oak copse reeking of meat.
With the moon in her eye
she runs away from the trap’s steely niche to another tightrope walk,
her furtive playing of the game.
P. V. Beck’s poems are from Fox Went Out, a cycle of poetry that traces the language of wildness and the unspooling of patterns and cycles in a Gray fox’s world. She has authored books and essays on ecology, consciousness and the fool. She lives in northern New Mexico.
Process Note: I walk through the woods carrying a little notebook and pen, up and down hills, following fox prints in the snow, or watch for trappers on old roads. I notice the changes to Fox’s world when spring melts the snow or drought grips the world in a searing summer. I see what Fox might see: sudden encounters with other creatures, scurrying mice, hear a howl or owls calling. And maybe the rains come before the fall and I walk out on the first cold morning and hear the Sandhill cranes distant cries, look up and see their ragged formation flying south. And I wonder.