Hans Ostrom’s “Fox and You” gives a fleeting wildlife encounter a quiet, almost sacred intensity. The speaker insists that if you saw a fox, she saw you first—fully, not just from the corner of her eye. The sharp snout, wise eyes, and stone-and-cinnamon fur can stop your breath, and that awe, Ostrom suggests, is the kind of pure, guileless reverence that true belief aims for. But the fox is not yours to keep. If she returns in a dream, by dawn she has gone back to her milk-drugged pups and folded your scent into her “Encyclopedia of Wariness.” The mood is hushed, watchful, and full of respect for an animal that stays magnificently wild.
Fox and You — Summary
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.