All You See Is Disappearing

i.

I name you Sympathy.

You do not emerge from a story book to lay down

magic on a flower bed. You come wounded parched

bone cold to rest on a tuft of leaves, carcass

of summer’s peonies. I find you in the shade

of a cypress, spine along stone, an eye for harm.

You arrive at the saddest time.

Dear Fox,

Bewilderment floats in forests long before

yet here you land. I’ve seen your visage

this year of rashes, falling hair.

Your brilliance belies you.

ii.

You’re skeptical:

I am not here for your conjuring.

I don’t listen, see you the way

I have always seen foxes—fey

tricksters, augurs, beings

who brush the North sky with swells of light

teach a prince to see with his heart.

I know a fox is more than a fox.

iii.

A girl of 14 wears a red fox fur hat, walks through cattails on frozen

marshes with her father, looks for a fox, finds her finials in the snow.

iv.

Now afraid to go near—sick, patched, manged as you—

amidst this plague, what will you bring?

You choose my garden for your last sleep.

Wanting to be good, needing goodness,

I throw a blanket on you, box you in the truck

take you from your world, to rescue you.

Doctors try all their elixirs for your succor.

v.

Sympathy, Vulpe, Fox, do words ensnare?

vi.

The girl looks for an animal who feels like a talisman

fire on a winter night, forecast of fortuity.

vii.

Today you arrive as you. (As if something elusive wild and wondrous

emerges from ancient legends, enters this realm, too.

That something of a dream moves through this wretched world

crosses fabled mythic lands for a perilous, glorious story.

The old world gives itself over, its beauty. You come as something to believe.)

viii.

After inching iced sidewalks through the night

at long last you make your way to the garden.

Tell me, dear Fox, if I save you, who will we be?

ix.

You don’t see me, but yes, I am beautiful. Watch me spin leap steal away on my toes.

Pity, you. I have eluded you all your life. Now with a heaviness, I lay down to die

and all you see

is disappearing.

(Cover Photo: Cameron Middleton)