When you see Mary Oliver please tell her …
Well, it’s just that there is a fox
that lives on Ridge Road and once in a while
when I am running on winter mornings
when the sky is still night,
I see it dash across the silvery patch
where the gavel path runs
down to the abandoned farmhouse in the Casey field.
You might mention that
we also have a pond. I think of it often
but rarely see it. The town always changes
the combination. The fence keeps out the deer and me
but not the teens from the apartments behind.
They cut the chain link and slip in,
drinking beer and making love in the darkness.
In the morning their empties float in the green water.
I saw a black bear just once.
It was outside a lean-to in the Smokey Mountains.
I guess it will be twenty-five years this June.
She appeared in the woods
while I was fetching water at the spring
and climbed a tree digging her claws into the bark,
paw over paw, going straight up.
Her two cubs and I watched from below.
Barbara gave me Evidence this year
for my birthday, which fell on Yom Kippur.
I hid it inside my siddur on that holiest of days
and read “Broken, Unbroken,”
while the congregation symbolically beat its chest
and confessed to the sin of not seeing god in a neighbor’s face.
“A meaningful fast,” we told each other, “A sweet year.”
On second thought,
just tell her that I am starting to understand
I don’t have to be good. Tell her this year
the rhododendrons finally seem to be getting enough water.
Maybe let her know that in addition to announcing my place
in the family of things, it would be helpful if the wild geese
would also suggest where to place the line breaks in my poems.
Tell Mary Oliver I wrote this for her.
