Poem of the Week, by Shelley Whitaker

Wild yeast Poem of the Week, by Tony Hoagland

Poem of the Week, by Shelley Whitaker

Tweet

The Fox Den

- Shelley Whitaker

As a kid on Spring evenings

while junebugs hooked their legs

into every drop of water and lassos

of grey moths sliced the air,

I would sit mid-driveway

waiting for a family of fox pups

to emerge from their hole in the earth

beside our house. Every May evening

they were born from red straw beds

of those woods; sharp-eyed, black-chinned

creatures burning behind the trees

like apparitions of the sunset.

I would always rise too quickly,

plastic zippers buzzing, shoelace

slapping concrete, scaring them

underground again. It knocked

the heart out of me to send something

back into blackness, to think a necklace

of sun-hungry dogs was snaking its way

back towards the center of the world,

all because I shuddered, all because

I thought I heard the wind call

my name, and rushed to meet it.