Three Red Foxes on a Gray Day by Faith Paulsen

Three Red Foxes on a Gray Day

I hear it – returning from my mailbox–
how ragged in the wind-torn winter
the raw shriek–
scan field, woods, yard for bird or dog –
But no– one, two,
three sparks
lit matches flare
prance bark
coats thick and ruddy scatting beasts
trick me in the homegrown meadow
in my own backyard
near Philadelphia.
Their calls, their ack-ack-ack’s
stormy confab indecipherable
on this property

which our recent college graduate turned into a meadow
using sustainable skills learned on his study abroad.
Planned it, smothered grass, left oak leaves where they fell.
Planted butterfly weed and shade perennials,
digging bare-chested into soil
dreaming of earthworms,
frogs and butterflies to be enumerated next spring.
Then moved to Chicago
leaving us and our new meadow to process by neglect.
Today a snow day two years into pandemic
the pandemic itself an endless snow day minus
snowy bootprints, wet mittens
and wonder. Instead
mostly boredom and fear.

Still, today, The bleak meadow – cold, hard ground
under leaves under snow
where sometimes deer bed down in the brush –
renders up, now, here,
these little wildfires.
The one on the slope cries out open-mouthed ack
ack-ack-ack.
The other two bow their heads
as if a rock and not a bark
had been hurled at their flattened ears.
One prances, paws the ground, each step its own meaning.
(Male or female? Why are there three?)
Birth, death, mating, earths warm with kits. On land once tameless,
then Lenape, later farmland, woods.
In myth, the fox, fire-bringer. emerges
at times of great and unpredictable change.
Suddenly brave, the two rear up
chase the one through my meadow
into the un-owned woods,
leaving what they came to bring me: Their dance.
Mystery enacted.

*

Author of three chapbooks and mother of three sons, Faith Paulsen’s day job is in insurance, Her work appears or is upcoming in Scientific American, Poetica Review, Poetry Breakfast, Milk art journal, Philadelphia Stories, Book of Matches, One Art, Panoply, Thimble, Evansville Review, Mantis and others. faithpaulsenpoet.com/