Terri Glass’s “The Fox Path”
The fox is clever, stealthy, swift, familial, independent, hearty, and very beautiful. In Spanish the word is zorro, a noun affixed to a dashing fictional hero of early California.
The fox’s path is a road for independent souls, wise familiars, rogues and rebels. The fox’s path ignores walls and fences, makes use of ditches, switches back on itself countless times, and winds through thickets and farmyards. The fox on its path wears out the dogs.
Sometimes foxes find us. Then they always seem like familiars. I saw one come out of the brush to the water’s edge at Coole Park in Ireland to take a happy, long drink. Another spoke to me in my barn from the pages of a long poem I wrote. Recently a woman told me a fox visited her deck for several months to sleep nightly on her chaise lounge.
All of these encounters seem magical, and that seems to be a given with fox sightings. No matter how often you encounter a fox, you dream of meeting another and another.
A Bay Area poet with roots in the Northwest, Terri Glass, wrote this poem:
“The Fox Path”
I want to follow the fox path
and enter a different world;
become swift, light footed
wear an outrageous fur coat
aim like an arrow
toward my earthen home
dream fox dreams
in my hidden den
slip into the womb
of hibernation,
melodic and serene
and always in tune
to the perfect hues of spring.
I want to follow the fox path-
the unknown beckoning;
the ancient world of smell,
the true field of touch-
paw to ground, nose to wind
fur radiating out
north, south, east and west.
I want to follow the fox path
and forget my humanness.
I want to follow the fox path
every morning I awake.
Like a dream-catcher, Glass perfectly snares my desire to be transmuted into another form, the fox’s sly, unconquerable form. Like me, like Terri Glass, don’t you want to “enter a different world? Be faster, lighter, more outrageously beautiful? Haven’t you ever wanted to dream the dreams of another creature? And who would not want to be “melodic and serene/and always in tune/to the perfect hues of spring?” Do you feel the insistent yearning and the fierce desire in these lines?
I want to follow the fox path-
the unknown beckoning;
the ancient world of smell,
the true field of touch-
paw to ground, nose to wind
fur radiating out
north, south, east and west.
I feel a sense of joy and abandon, a running to and an embrace of the unknown, a mad scamper back to reclaim the ancient world and the true field of the senses. And when I read or hear these lines—“paw to ground, nose to wind/fur radiating out/north, south, east and west” I am in the field transformed, thrilling to the sensation of the wind gusting in all directions, riffling along my body.
Rather than end there, Glass reminds us in four closing lines that transformation requires intention and focus. It requires perseverance. It requires shedding what is restrictive, or human, and embracing the bold sprint to freedom not just once, but every day I wake up.
You might enjoy this writing prompt. What is your favorite totem, the magical animal you dream of. Is it an owl? A horse? A wolf. Write a poem about meeting, sharing an adventure with, or becoming this creature.