Paul Nelson, Vixen, Photograph
VIXEN
Today in the subdued neighborhood
just after the Fourth’s horrendous explosions,
garish sprays of lit chemicals, a vixen walks
right up the asphalt between the lawns,
flittering flags and flowers and lidded
garbage and recycling bins
we rolled out last night to clarify things.
She looks moth-eaten, neglected, her tail ratty.
Is she looking for easy pickings in broad sun,
bits of snacks dropped in mindless festivity,
or simply taking the shortest path to a place
only she knows. Her gait is graceful if emaciated.
She looks neither left nor right, feeling safe
from gunshot or dog, dogs still in hiding
from the nation’s thundering hubris.
As if the vixen were the stunned widow
whose children were in the apartment
when gods and politicians allowed a Russian
rocket to atomize the premises and kids.
Kids of Kailua, in the Nixon era, morning after,
collected dead mynahs, doves, shama thrush
washed ashore, that had flown way out
to get away from the exhibition of dominion
over nature but lacked strength to fly back
into the stunned quiet. Handfuls of feathers,
beaks, misty eyes, toes folded like fists.
Town fathers thereafter ended the show.
Where are her three squirrel gray kits
we watched in April when she brought them
out from the den along the wooded bank
onto the back lawn by the river to play,
compete and pester her to nurse one more time
at a teat? She weaned them, left them when they
were ready for their world, when their coats
had turned fox red.
The vixen will be sleek again, and soon,
tail and coat expensive, ready to breed,
ready for more squealing in the den in spring.
She will cull a weak one. Or one or two too many,
depending on her sense of food in the area.
A pair of weasels need an acre of mice,
rats, voles and moles before they will breed.
They compete with fox and owl.
She will bite without mercy at the base
of the soft head, severing the spinal cord,
then drag it from the den far enough
for predators to find. She has never desired
hope, or time, just season and some
strong children who do leave. She knows her
business, a transient, beautiful male.
A woman of Kiev is tired of men, the calamity
of sex, and feels safe in utter despair now,
detonations sporadic, another crone free to roam
gaping in oblivion without the bother of time,
silly seasons, shopping hysteria, too many busy
children running malls, weaning themselves
by incineration: atoms, carbon drifting in air
she doesn’t care, trudging, to breathe in, or out.
____________
Paul Nelson