“Foxes” When I was small my sister and I named every deer that brushed our windows in the night and we wove mythologies around the farmers' peacocks who each dusk and morning broke the forest quiet with alarms: prison-breaks, catastrophes, lost children's cries. We cut this stanza because Afternoons under canopies of oak my father we felt it explained the led our rowdy bear hunts. Invisible things father’s importance rather coffee under the may apples rustled and ran from his tread. than showing it—it read My father had cousins in Ireland and a full red beard too much like prose like Irish kings and a pure tenor voice that once exposition (although ’s r e “Invisible things/under the alk ten made him star of the choir and glee club at Fordham W h d may-apples” is lovely) back in the city. ig vi Da s to t d e wa nd dit e e r goal age a tains In a dream once when I was seven I had a dream: w en gu ou con foxes came out of the woods to say I was their stolen Wh xes,” ’s lan oem , e “Fo poem This p dens e cousin, lost in the wilderness of men long ago— w , the gery. zing , and they had ransomed me an hour to escape— a e ima e am lines thos re. "If you can climb a tree you can live with us!" o r som scula draw en m o In their bright black eyes I was reflected back v t u e m ted out n es a fox. Small, quick and light I ran home to take my leave a w ti i l qua raced home to say goodbye but my father was dancing in circles in the foyer, singing, his hair like fire in the morning light: O if I had my bended bow, my arrow and my string… I called to him but his wild eyes did not know me. The rafters rattled with his song, in the distance dogs were howling. back to the woods, but the quick nervous foxes had all gone, I ran melted into the trees, and then the peacocks screamed before I could and I awoke. Today a suburb covers everything: Fields, woods, and farm— No peacocks, but sirens— Still in spring sometimes I wake to a slow hare's child-like screams and think of foxes returning with another ransom We cut the “suburb” stanza because it seemed overly elegiac—a tone Walker had already established very well. And the language in that stanza is list-like and halting. © 2014 by David Walker
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