ALL OF US

ALL OF US

	i.
A young, or else malnourished fox, carrot-
	red, mottled white, pale gray,
Cautiously trotted across traffic heavy
	Route 77, my path, that
I cannot say, its tiny paws patting black
	asphalt—Hinckley Park
Back there somewhere, with lots of foxes’
	shady dens therein.

	ii.
Maybe its Daddy had not come home
	with a gray goose tossed
Across its back, whacked and mashed
	by a pick-up truck, and
Young Felix, here, had wandered afar
	to staunch the gap in his
Heart and belly, lonely fatherlessness
	epidemic over five

	iii.
Or six generations in this fox’s life.
	I mean me, home after
Dropping a grandchild off at Cape 
       Elizabeth High School, 
Parking my car, climbing uncertainly
	out of it, hearing a few
Sparrows singing quite mightily
	against each other, bird

	iv.	
Song a fight for mere being, written
	on today’s dull windy sky
In invisible ink, my head empty even
	of echoes, like that young
Fox, who’d vanished into the mortal
	graveyard of a dirt parking
Lot until I’d stuffed by slinging this
	clumsiness of thought,

	v.
That all of us were lost foxes once,
	and invisible sparrows. 
This one, me not it, grew up adoring
	Burl Ive’s baritone-tenor
Tremolo: O the fox went out on a 
	chilly night, Prayed for
the moon to give him light! O Felix, sad 
        fox, get a plump mouse to munch.

KR, 5.19.2025