This morning,
unlike other mornings,
a red fox loped across the road
in front of our car—
a bright arrow
streaking on an agenda all its own,
catching us unawares
in the car’s vapid, boxed warmth.
Because of its pointed beauty,
its consuming animal purpose,
we can sip our coffee,
conduct our business,
struggle with these weighted days
as if we, too, slip away
like flames into the darkness
of mountains,
to drink the clean grief
of still pools
in the first light of morning.
/////////////
Raphael Kosek’s poems and nonfiction have appeared in Poetry East, Catamaran, and many other journals. Her chapbook, Rough Grace, won the 2014 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize. She won the 2019 Bacopa Literary Review’s poetry contest and Eastern Iowa Review’s 2016 nonfiction prize. American Mythologywas recently released from Brick Road Poetry Press. She teaches English at Marist College where her students keep her real. She is the 2019-2020 Dutchess County Poet Laureate.
Lightwood 
Nice!
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