Round Thoughts
in a Square Dome
 
Quick eyes follow the iron tree,
strip-tin leaves rusting
into weapons, pads pause
on the vinyl hummock,
sniff at astroturf, but eyes
still look me fox around
and wonder from the gut
what feeling flits through fallen cans,
what spirit springs
from velvet toad:
only the living can know death.
flit fox's pointed pinnas,
there, there, pad paused and
(listen!)

 

 
knows the fall of foxes
in the metal heart,
still (roar) as if all
delicate snout grew to
ancestral whole and howled
the hurling hurting life back
into frightened trees with
one apple anguish
on the plastic grass.
 
Still (roar) as if each exhale
left all we can know of gods
in the vibrant paws' still padding:
 
the fox said: "That is death."
 
And turned again
and lay the apple anguish
on old styrofoam and waited:
(roar) the true tree growing
up the veins called,
"That is life,"
and saw exfoliate rust
bloom on the iron leaf,
felt fox-iron line his blood,
rust flaming out at tail;
 
eyes became foxfire stars,
he turned to burning bird
while sky filled up with perfect foxes
burnished on the rusted dome:
 
fox felt falling (roar)
gut one metal bark
(roar) one whole howl
to leave and stay;
lay on the styrofoam
and sang alone in anguish
of his apple song:
 
Light falls (does it really fall?)
is (is it?)
I see (what? how?)
---- still ----
light falls
 
here.
 
Is sky and
is people and
---- still ----
(foxes)
 
falls.
 
These still (x,y,z) corners
graph no shadows
where light soars,
regularize incandescence
into boxes; but the foxes
---- still ----
 
falls.
 
Still, the bark's echo
still, round the canyon,
bark out of boxes (a bird?)
falls through the still sky
of that dome, where at home
hangs moon up his hat
---- still ----
light flaming tails
red comets in the brush
(and it does) falls
 
here:
 
how the boxes break,
flame into blue-brain's
geodesic sky; all square circles
---- still ----
by the blazing laugh of foxes
(that is how)
 
is.
 
Though why wheres into corners,
and how whats the foxes
---- still ----
light
 
falls.

 

 
In the stillness into two:
one on styrofoam sank toward stone,
one rose silver toward the moon.
Moved the apple eyes in anguish
heavy flitting over sinking paws
fox watched his other self outside
dance in silver silence on the dump,
glide through clutter like the wind,
raise slender songs
to the waiting moon; moonlight
breathes back foxfire in the night.
 
Red fox shrank still to a rusty can,
shrank inside past the ragged lip,
curled flat face up
like rusty resentment: eyes.
 
Silver fox played with worlds,
laughed at comets, tumbled asteroids,
silver stars his eyes, the sky all fox;
and red fox only sullen spots
of darker in the darkening dump.
 
The can re-sealed. Label reappeared.
Instant Fox Soup. Dilute before serving.
Garnish with silver stars.

(falls)

silver shadow
moonlight-lover
other self
reaved my roar
sucked out all howl
(how? how?) -- oh, silver apple,
oh, shadow anguish, oh, angel-fox
(listen!)
 
I am nothing nothing

    (that is how)
     
to your silver stars:
 
---- still ----

 

falls.

 

The Case of the Schizophrenic Fox
 
Can the fox free?
Can the soup silver?
Will the split seal?
 
check one:
  1. genetic
  2. The Walt Whitman Howard Johnson's on the New Jersey Turnpike
  3. antidepressants
  4. niacin deficiency
  5. none (or all) of the above, m'love
 
in apple anguish
 
---- f ----
 
 
Am I sunk in sea of silver
stabbing through star-holes?
Did can expand or I shrink
to this vastness: inside stars
fall(s) even here ---- still ----
breathing rocks and rocks
that metal heartbeat sky,
and windows (mirrors?)
onto (into)?
the feeling as I breathed the silver stars,
and tides flowed in my body
(that is how). I was the sky.
(falls)
 
Silver, silver -- on my whiskers
in my glands
---- still ----
red apple, silver core
(said, "That is life")
 
 
the paused pad falls
footfalls far to sing me fox
around the apple stars.

--Gerald Grow

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