The Fox's Nonce Sonnet
by Lisa Chavez
Across the river, trotting, the fox. Who
pauses to test the river’s rotten ice
with ginger step. Will she trust it this late
in the year? She draws back her paw, licks.
Appraises the river’s dangerous skin.
Looks at me as if to say what purpose,
these stories, that make fable of my life? None,
I say, but the sheen of dream and magic
they lend to our lives. She cocks her head,
considering. Squats to piss. She is just
an animal, marking with scent. She scratches
at her haunch, stands to shake herself, is gone.
I’m left alone on the human side, in this
territory demarcated by words.
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This unpublished poem was inspired by stories of fox wives, animals who transform into humans. This is the final poem of a series that didn’t quite materialize. The poem reflects the longing I felt as I wrote: I wanted transformation too, but to escape words and human constructions. This poem points to the impossibility of that and returns from myth to the real world of the fox. It’s also my only poem written in form.
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LISA CHAVEZ is a poet memoirist from Alaska now living in the mountains of New Mexico with a pack of Japanese dogs. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico and is the author of In An Angry Season (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Destruction Bay (West End Press, 1998).