Chases Shadow

Fox moves in sun spots. A panel of light tells the time.

He’s cold.

When his stick-straight hairs are rust instead of gold,
he moves again. Three times, he moves
until he has nowhere else to go. Seeds from the same tree
that cast these shadows work their way into Fox’s fur,
make him itch, make him roll over again.

Fox has no father. He has no mother.
Not a sister. Never a brother.

He sits in the center of a family of trees.
Fox thinks about these empty spaces in his own way,
in his own language. He thinks about the tree trunk where he slept
last night, the place where he dreamt of Windigo Fox.

She was red.

She wanted to test the skin beneath his fur.


Fox leaves. He won’t find this spot again
after dark shapes part the shade, spilling Night.
His paws flex in unison, clearing fallen trees,
a true sign, he knows, of a healthy forest.
He passes no one but is invisible anyway.
If anything, a flash of strawberry and teeth
from the corner of an eye.

Closer to civilization.

There are streets and free boxes on corners.
Fox doesn’t realize he lives in Forest Park, not in the wild at all.
He doesn’t know that where he sometimes goes to beg for scraps
is only forty-five minutes away, fifteen by streetcar.
There are useless parts of stolen bikes still chained to trees,
their rightful owners come and gone,
having already discovered their losses.


Fox remembers the time two girls dressed as faeries
chained themselves to one of the older Redwoods in the park
waiting for someone to walk by before shouting their protest.
It was a group of high-school joggers,
most of the all-girl track team, that happened to pass
as Fox watched from another strip of shade.
The girls in tulle and nylon were bound to the trunk
by thick loops of metal, the clasp unseen.
They screamed and cried

save this tree, set your conscience free!

Great strands of mucus ran from their mouths and noses,
uninterrupted, to their feet. The track team was confused.
Neither Fox, nor the pack of girls, saw any chainsaws
or men with triplicate pastels in their hands
declaring the destruction of that particular tree.
The track team laughed, their pearl earrings burning white.

Tweakers. Hipsters.

They ran on, picking up their collective step.
The chained girls’ tears dried and they unlinked themselves
from the old bark before kneeling down to inhale
something from an ID card, on all fours, taking turns.
They staggered toward a clearing, the thick chain swinging
over their shoulders, their arms around each other’s waist.
Fox remembers because of this last image specifically.
He reminisces in their arms so tightly curled around each other,
in comfort, when he realizes his legs are tired.
The impact of the ground is much greater
on pavement than on pine needles.

He is in the city.