seeing a fox

People tell me fox live in these here woods, but I'd not seen one until this week when I saw a dead one lying next to the side of the road. A beautiful yellow pointy-nosed fox. Not what I needed.

Adrienne Rich understands about fox:

I needed fox        Badly I needed
a vixen for the long time none had come near me
I needed recognition from a
triangulated face        burnt-yellow eyes
fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail
I needed history of fox        briars of legend it was said she had
        run through
I was in want of fox

And the truth of briars she had to have run through
I craved to feel on her pelt        if my hands could even slide
past or her body slide between them        sharp truth
        distressing surfaces of fur
lacerated skin calling legend to account
a vixen's courage in vixen terms

For a human animal to call for help
on another animal
is the most riven the most revolted cry on earth
come a long way down
Go back far enough it means tearing and torn        endless
        and sudden
back far enough it blurts
into the birth-yell of the yet-to-be human child
pushed out of a female        the yet-to-be woman

1998