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.
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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/
