Fox and You

If you saw the fox, know the fox saw you first, and not out of the corner of her eye.

If your breath caught when image of a precise snout, wise eyes, thick bristling stone-and-cinnamon fur struck your optic den, know that’s the sort of guiltless, guileless reverence the best of the best Beliefs have in mind.

If she returns to you, taking a path through dream, know by dawn she went back to milk-drugged pups. And slept, the scent of you included now in her edition of Foxes’ Encyclopedia of Wariness.