Here's another prose poem from
How the World was Made
It's one of my favorites in the manuscript. It comes from a time walking along the banks of the Raccoon River in Des Moines, Iowa during the winter, following tracks in snow - back when the river froze...
In the Fox’s Eye
The fox sniffs the base of a few trees, then climbs the bank
up onto the rail line. Thin, orange, he trots down the center of the tracks,
between the rails, towards me. Beyond the fox, headlights and red tail lights
pass each other on an overpass. Lights from the houses on either side of the
tracks flicker through bare branches. The fox stops ten yards away, studies me.
How long has it been since I’ve seen myself through wild black eyes?
The fox shrugs me off, slips back down to the tree line,
decides to forage among house garbage. I descend off the tracks a few minutes
later, lean against a hollowed-out cottonwood. Sirens. A dog calls out. Other
dogs return the call. Dead milkweed pods rattle against each other. How long
has it been since I looked at the world from inside the detail of dead winter
weeds?
Two deer cross the tracks. There are so many creatures living inside
the city, moving along the tree and weed corridors, ditches, empty lots. Yet,
it’s always a surprise when I see them. They pause, blow smoke. Someone throws
a bottle against the overpass wall and the deer disappear. A celebration or an
argument. Snow begins to fall. How long has it been since I moved in this dark land
between predator and prey?
I wait until the ground is covered with a thin layer of snow
before moving out of the shadow of the cottonwood and ascend up onto the
tracks. An owl glides over me. A quarter mile down the tracks, under a
streetlight at an empty crossing, I find three drops of blood on the new snow.
Brilliant red against white. The red of summer in a grey time. How long has it
been since I felt snow on my skin, the cold night sinking in?
It’s almost time for the freight to pass. The owl is out
there, sailing over the roof tops, wings pulling everything beneath it into the
silence that guards the borders of death. More sirens, closer now. Somewhere
out there, an eight-year-old boy is dreaming he is an owl. His feathers are
pulled off by invisible fingers, one by one. He inches down a tree, stands in
the moonlit snow, alone, his cold birdskin glistening. He’ll wake with a lifelong
desire to roam railroad tracks in the middle of the night.
In other news. Or related news...
The Climate Resistance Handbook
is Here
Other Prose Poems from the Manuscript
can be found below:
