The Fox Is A Winter Sleeper
There is an eventuality as respects mankind
and the beast...as the one dies, so the other...
so that the one [has] no superiority over the other,
both are destined to the same end.
– Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20
I
A fox in the snow, frozen.
At most a few days. Still beautiful
as when he felt his small body falling
under his gait, his world of winter fields,
walls and woods pulling away, a gray mist
turning dark rushing to fill his eyes.
The pelt still held its sheen and vibrancy,
the small eyes still open in a dead stare,
the pointed snout in snow on impact,
as if searching for a scent to satisfy
a constant hunger, suggesting his fall
was natural, sudden, not expected.
The mouth slightly opened, revealing
long lips pulled away from black gums,
rows of small, sharp teeth exposed
framed in a strange snarling smile;
the tongue slack, dry, curled at the edges,
the forelegs bent under the chest
where his heart once beat. The tail
still holding its bush with a dusting
of wind-blown snow.
I looked in vain for foul play – teeth
or claw marks, torn skin, a bullet hole.
Only a beautiful fox dead in snow.
Yet something vital in him let go,
broke his stride, brought him down.
Whatever it was, he could not outrun
his own mortality, could no more escape
his shadow than the inner law that rules
every breathing thing without pity or mercy.
II
And then the words came to me:
“And God breathed into the man the breath of life...”
How easy that must have been for Him.
I had the will and desire but not the power.
I was helpless to bring the fox back to life,
a second chance, to see him leap and run
across snow-covered fields again, and seek
the shelter of familiar woods again,
as though released from a cage.
I took comfort in the fact that Death,
at its worse, is a wakeless sleep, no more;
a door that opens to no interior.
A tedious story told and retold,
always with the same ending,
the same hopeless disappointment.
III
The snow would keep him a little longer,
then, in that slow descent into decay,
the earth would reclaim him for her own.
I walked away, the hard snow cracking
under my boots, breaking the silence
that had settled over the morning.
Somewhere in the distance impatient
cawing crows waiting with hunger,
they had picked up the fox’s scent.
Copyright © Maurice Rigoler | Year Posted 2023
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