Poetry of the Present: Fox on the Run

POETRY OF THE PRESENT (D. H. LAWRENCE)

November 6, 2022

FOX ON THE RUN

8:45 pm, a November full moon Sunday, crisp air

Soft light from the skies and my Honda Passport headlights

I see an industrial duster appended to a lean, little wolfish body

Scampering across the green space just beyond the iron gates

Bolt, bolt somewhere off in the direction of the winterized pool

And the backyards with offering plates of dry dog food 

Semi-urban fox, opossum, raccoon, rabbit

Easier pickings here than the cotton fields across 48th Avenue

Fox? Coyote? The yip-yips I hear in the fields toward the South Canadian River

Suggest coyote, not fox, not dog, not caterwauling feline (that would be me, at least 

in my own idea of self years and years and years ago… so glad that’s in the rearview mirror)

To all wildness, I support you

I leave a special Seventh-Heaven Pumpkin Spice muffin (well, half – I ate the muffin top)

Broken into chunks and tossed behind my Knock-out Roses and red & white periwinkles

And the bushes in front of the hail-pocked weathered cedar privacy fence. 

Tuesday is mid-term elections day. 

I’ll vote. Perhaps this time I’ll do detailed research 

Instead of simply voting “Throw the bums out.”

The coyote’s not a fox

Nor is it an opossum, rabbit, raccoon, or semi-feral cat

Too bad. 1976 Norman High School Spanish Club Spring Break

Trip to Mexico City, Taxco, Cuernavaca and then down winding Sierra Madres

Acapulco Hotel disco “La Tormenta” dancing after straining to see 

The famed cliff divers included in our package deal; 

Couldn’t wait to get out of there; who wants to see self-immolation?

Who wants to pay to see the poor risk their lives just for entertainment? 

Couldn’t wait to dance, dance, dance 

Popular still “Fox on the Run” by Sweet, memories bring a 

Return to innocence – where the poor do not mutilate themselves to entertain the rich

Return to purity –Spanish Club Spring Breaks do not unwittingly play into the old paradigm

Or simply dance to 1975 “Fox on the Run” by Sweet

Coyote tail Pony tail run run run dance

The full moon away

I’m here today

My eyes full moons

The cool picnic table air

I’ll never give up

And nor should you; sweet brushtail bush coyote

November 7, 2022

Wet leaves on the patio

Turn the card

A nest of beetles, or a smaller leaf over a smaller leaf over a smaller leaf

Matrochka fall

Five Russian textbooks, dictionaries, glossaries of verbs

Unboxed and placed on my pristine white bookshelves

Near Erik Satie’s A Mammal’s Notebook

After he died, they found 100 umbrellas in his cramped Parisian rooms

Not too thrilled about this

The velvet eccentric had a dozen identical suits, 

to alternate day by day by week; 

Yet after he died, they found a half dozen of those 

untouched, unworn

Inventories of the “raw” vs the “cooked” 

It’s all symbolic – the unworn velvet suit: 

potential for rebirth, a new “skin” and a new being

The worn-out suit: 

Experience, prior knowledge, scaffolding (but to where…?)