Took my daughter for a late night drive in Point Reyes last week. We both love to drive around the county at night, out by the Nicasio Reservoir, along Platform Bridge Road back to Olema, east through Samuel P. Taylor Park and the San Geronimo Valley, and back home to Fairfax. About an hour round-trip. Enough time to listen to 20 great songs, talk a bit, and generally encounter some wildlife. This night it was a fox, who ran across the road in front of the car near Taylor Campground. When I got home, having struggled with two hospice poems for weeks, I wrote this piece, all in one go. After being bogged down in not one but two recalcitrant poems, the short lines and simplicity of a fox poem were liberating.
Almost
hit a fox
on my way home.
He ran out
small
pale brown
bushy guy
zig-zagging
in the headlights.
I swerved.
I was a
house on fire
he didn’t burn
a flood
he stayed dry.
He stayed alive
despite my
XJ8 killing machine.
I’m in my house now
and he’s free
running between trees
by the stream
awake
in his fantastic dream
alive and free
in
spite
of
me.
He might even be
curled up small
breathing
evenly
dreaming
of the luminous
whites
of a human’s eyes.
