EVERYTHING MOVES EVERYTHING

I’m thinking of the buck that my dog chased

yesterday—how I barely got a good look at ‘em:

his brown and gray and branch of antler, disappearing

into brown and gray and branch of creek-bed,

dried up in the June heat.

How my dog shouldn’t be able to run like that—not anymore—

like a kite, I mean, tied by invisible string to a fleeing thing.

His back legs, deaf to the neural conversation,

picked up and propelled suddenly—across creek,

and street, and hill. As a child’s toy was once

picked up and flown by a make-believe hand.

Everything moves everything. I’m thinking of

my friend Rebecca who, just the other day,

sent me a picture of her growing belly. The sun, glowing

between four and five p.m. leans against her cheek.

Fingers of light wrap around her arm, not like a hand–seizing,

or changing–but like vines hold a pine, like moss holds

any tree

Everything moves everything. I’m thinking of

the fox who, just this Sunday, on her morning commute

across my patio, showed herself to me.

I was writing down my dreams, thinking the cool air would be nice,

when she descended, like a shadow from the hill,

past my wicker-woven chair onto

foot-chipped tile.

The true red of her was hidden beneath a

shawl of gray; little red riding hood in reverse.

All of her was light as a cat on the hard-set sand

(stretches of desert in irrigated green).

She was about to turn the corner, her tail

almost gone, her spine in a curve that spelled leaving,

when I made a noise–or when a noise made my pen stop,

mouth open—Hi there!

(I am here to notice things, aren't I? To get low and quiet inside a den of words?)

As surprising as the fox, this new desire: to be

noticed, to be seen.

Look! Look how easy it was to walk past me. How sly

we both are.

At night I’ve heard this fox crying

into my bathroom window, and all along the deck.

Her call is harsh and insistent like a chair

dragged instead of lifted

across night’s floor.

When the fox hears me, she freezes, turns.

Her eyes are as wide as a person’s; her chin,

a perfect V. She looks like my friend Rebecca,

I think to myself. And suddenly everything

without her face becomes very obvious.

Everything moves everything.

Especially when, right then, I watch a fox alone

become a fox not alone.

I half expect her to flee, change course.

(I have done something I didn’t need to do;

said something I am not sure I meant

in the first place.)

I brace myself for her jump, her snarl,

her swift swivel back toward hill, toward den.

But after a few seconds of taking me in,

of realizing I am there, with pajamas and ballpoint pen,

she simply continues where she was headed, and

at the same pace as before. She disappears–no,

she moves. Somewhere I can’t see her, where she is

just as beautiful.

Just as there.

Before she does—I swear—she smiles.

Like she, too, has just seen a fox, and is remembering,

just now, that it is poet season, and is

eager, when she finds them, to tell the others about

her sighting, about the woman who appeared,

out of nowhere,

in her yard this morning.