Читать книгу Book of Dog - Cleopatra Mathis - Страница 13

Dead Fox

We pretended to know nothing about it.

I withdrew to childhood training: stay out

of swampy undergrowth, choked edges.

This was around the time

we were too cruel to kill the mice we caught,

leaving them in the Have-a-Heart trap

under the sun-burning bramble of rugosa.

But moving up the trail, we caught a glimpse

right at the start: the fox just over the hillock

on the dune-side slope, spoiling

the grass-inscribed sand. Neither of us looked—

it seemed best to back away.

On the dune’s steep side

we surveyed what we’d come for: ocean’s

snaking blues beyond the meadow, the silvered

blade-like wands lying down. Lovely enough

to hold ourselves to that view.

But the currents of an odor wafted in and out,

until the sweep of smell grew wider, wilder.

The heat compounded, and ugliness

settled its cloud over us, profound as human speech,

although by then we were not speaking.