Poetry | Nathan Erwin

In Chautauqua County, I smoked a joint with Olivia for her first time, 

behind her childhood home, set back from the road.

 

Before, I took the last drag, I looked up

to see a fox whisper out of the neighbor’s grapes. 

 

It was late & our small fire dimly lit the yard, giving shadows to trees. The wind 

encouraged their roots to fly, milling in the sharp language of time.

 

The fox, clear & burning, lowered himself to the grass,

watching the stillness of a mother rabbit at the hedgerows.

 

Releasing my hand, Olivia stood up, as if to help her somehow,
                                    & the fox took a step forward. 

 

The flesh-eater’s hair bristled, a shapeshifter scrounging for mushrooms 

at the end of the world, a jaw capable of breaking the rabbit’s neck in five seconds.

 

His incisors, glinted in the dewy dark, reflecting the fires of Troy & Carthage, teeth 

that went back beyond the building of the henges, before the flood story, 

echoing a procession of pouring darkness more ancient than any god.

 

Incisors that, once, in that blackness 

drew blood from mishappen beings, lost & lumbering. 

 

The mother rabbit sat still.      

 

It could have been the weed, that we were way too high, but we thought we heard her say,

I’ve been wondering about you. 

 

I glanced at my wife as she stopped laughing, 

I wanted to hold her still all night, her body curling

 

in the early style of smoke, but something spilled over her face (was it confusion or sorrow?), 

& just there, behind it, for a moment, it was if another person had arrived, or was it another fire?

    

The fox split                                  in two.

 

One half tore down a row of grapes, followed by Olivia on the phone with animal control.

They told her all their drivers were in for the night; it was Independence Day, after all.

 

The other half lunged at the rabbit & one of them, I couldn’t tell which, called out my name. 

 

Three mourning doves in a nearby tree lifted off & when I looked back, in some sort of divine trick,

everything had vanished. 

 

Inside me, fleetingly, I saw the little misshapen fractals of evil 

passed down through bloodstream, my father & his & his. 

 

I’ve been wondering about you, I said to my joint, then to myself, 

then to the clay & water that made me. 

 

Olivia returned with a tick on her thigh. Whispering out of the grapes, 

&, unapologetically, into the house. 

 

 

In the morning, 

the grapes fell in a white, gauzy light.

 

& down the street, Lake Erie let out a brilliant shine 

then tightened.