Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Fox

By Tom Sleigh

Marine helicopters on maneuver kept dippingtoward swells at Black’s Beach, my board’s poisegiving way to freefall of my wave tubing
over me, nubs of wax under my feet as I crouchedunder the lip, sped across the face and kicked out—all over Southern Cal a haze settled: as if light breathed
that technicolor smog at sunset overSan Diego Harbor where battleships at anchor,just back from patrolling the South China Sea, were
having rust scraped off and painted gray.This was my inheritance that lay stretched before me:which is when I felt the underbrush give way
and the fox that thrives in my brain,not looking sly but just at home in his peltand subtle paws, broke from cover and ran
across the yard into the future to sniff my gravestone,piss, and move on. And so I was reborn intomy long nose and ears, my coat’s red, white, and brown
giving off my fox smell lying heavy on the windsin the years when I’d outsmart guns, poison,dogs and wire, when the rooster and his hens
clucked and ran, crazy with terrorat how everything goes still in that way a fox adores,gliding through slow-motion drifts of feathers.

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