Foxes

By Alex Carrigan

After Ada Limón

It took me over three decades
to learn how bad a fox smells.
My mother told me that one
came up to her backyard fence
recently while she was playing
with her dog in the yard. 
Her dog likes to press his one ear against 
the slats, chew a ball, then drop it 
down the slope and into
the ravine. That day, she said,
the fox ran up to the fence because, she thinks,
the squeaking of the ball made it think
there was a wounded prey nearby.
The fox disappeared back into the autumnal
leaves once her dog saw it and asserted
his dominance over the patches
of dirt and dead grass around it. She said
the smell of the fox lingered even after
it disappeared back down the slope.
The scent of caked dirt and ravine water
that covered the fence posts for a time.
I have to wonder, three decades from now,
if it’s a fox that will come out
of the woods when I die.
If I’d smell it first as it’s lured by
my mewls in hopes of eating what
it finds. We’re taught to fear the wolves
that could easily emerge if we lure them
with our playful indifference to nature,
but I wonder why we never learned
to look for those copper pelts
and worry what it means once they
dare to show themselves to us.

Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has appeared in SoFloPoJo, Cotton Xenomorph, Bullshit Lit, HAD, fifth wheel press, and more. Visit carriganak.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @carriganak for more info.