NOTE: Any poetry in this peice is a derivative of love sonnets from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, my aunt's favorite inspirational poet*
Dawn with Fox.
Marianne paces the dusty space between the neatly misshapen door and the giant gaping hole where the furnace should be. The air is cold, but in a still, obstinate way. The little cabin leaves little room for doubt: five hundred square feet, including one bathroom with a solidly rusted sink, one bedroom with a cracked window, and this space. She feels utterly, unequivocally bewildered. She’s at a loss as to what to do.
There’s the refrigerator, no food. Her canvases lie blank and bemused in the corner, wishing her ill. An easel is folded and hiding. Brushes, acrylics, oils. A cardboard box labeled TOM’S MARKET holds her complete collection of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Machiavelli. Her life sits in boxes. She grimaces.
Outside the cabin, her frosty pink Volkswagen sits in the snow, settling. Sinking. The air is so still she’s reluctant to move, reluctant to break the significant harmony, the perfect balance. She’s besotted with the air. She’ll never get any work done. Who is she kidding?
She drags two boxes to the bedroom, closes the door, stretches. Straightening up, she sees her reflection in the window, and grimaces a second time. Her stringy black hair, pale, translucent skin, thick red lips—all gawk back at her. She cowers, then looks past herself at an obscure spot of brown on the white blanket of snow.
It’s only there for a minute; she sees it, it sees her. She watches. Eyes widen. Tongues lap. The fox is gone, The fox sprits away on stealthy paws. Perhaps she’s not so alone after all. She feels triumphant.
She sets the canvases apart, rigs the easel, spreads the paints on the floor. The world beyong looks inviting. She really should go out.
She steps over a sketchbook, dog-eared and well-worn. She shoulders the door open, steps out, and embraces the cold. Her breath spirals into the misty air, and she hugs herself rather happily. The hills on either side are covered in silent, beautiful pines. The blue-peaked mountains glimmer from a distance, the sun hiding the shadowy shoulders.
The sky is a blue-gray canvas itself, silky smooth to perfection. Her feet sink in the snow as she waddles out to her car, locks it, and takes another step towards the forest. Crunch, crunch. The snow really isn’t as soft as she’d imagined.
She looks behind her, momentarily, and sees a pavement of pure marble, her footprints her footprints the only flaws to the surface. The air is quite still, but it sings a lullaby of fragments and lost words. There are screams of joy within the quiet breeze and she is shocked; awed..
She inches closer to her forest. Her doc martens start that soggy, temperamental feeling. Her eyes flicker over the stony branches, eerie shadows lacing white fingers. Crows caw. Birds shoot up from their nests. She eyes the fox on a ridge a few feet in.
It sits on its hind legs. Eyes wide, mouth wide. Mind wide. The lullaby is strong now, singing sweet music in a tuneless canto:
Guess who now holds thee?
Death, you said
but there the silver answer rang
not death, but love
And Marianne hears every word, disbelieving. The fox keeps his gaze steady. Unwavering. Sparkles belly-dance off the snow in swirls and cyclones. She tries not to move. Her stomach flutters.
A horn sounds. Marianne jumps, looks back at a small, black Jeep ravaging snow to meet her presence. Looking back, she sees the fox has gone into the shadows, hiding or just out of her line of vision. She waits. He stays hidden.
“Hello there!”
The voice is unfamiliar, unrecognizable. The sparkles dull into a low dim, still, and then stop all together. The sun feels strangely warm, hot almost. Marianne is uncomfortable. Her shoes sink.
“Careful,” the stranger warns, “the sun’s coming out and it wets the snow fast.”
He’s right. Her shoes are already sodden.
“My name is Luke,” the visitor shouts. He shuts off his engine, and his voice is suddenly very strong. Marianne looks into his face.
Luke is friendly, that much is obvious. If it isn’t for the ghosts lingering below his lids, and the light scruff creeping along his chin, Marianne would take him as one of those obnoxious neighborly people. Instead, she sees something that makes her feel more sociable, herself.
“Nice to meet you,” she says, not really insincere but not sincere either. “do you live close by?”
“No one lives close by,” Luke laughs, the air snatching his breath and hurling it to the sky. “You’re isolated, completely.”
Marianne’s neighborly grin is fading. “It’s what I want.” She gets this all the time. Questions, accusations. As if living in the middle of nowhere is out of the ordinary.
“I understand. I live a few miles out, on that ridge over there,” he points vaguely at a hill in the distance, and Marianne doesn’t even try to look. “I enjoy the solitude. It’s a perfect place to write, although I don’t write nearly as much as I should.”
“You’re a writer?” Marianne is intrigued. She feels momentarily connected to this Luke, as if they might have been friends a while back and are just now getting reacquainted.
“Of sorts,” he smiles wistfully. He stands, rocking slightly. Hands in pockets and a faraway look on his face.
“Want to come in?” Marianne asks catiously. “There’s not much,” she adds, regretfully. “I just moved.”
“I heard.” Luke’s all smiles. “I knew the couple who lived here. Practically everyone in this area of Prescott knows each other somehow or another.”
Marianne groans, inwardly. She understands this means she’ll be expected to make an effort at introducing herself. She walks to her cabin, Luke following a few steps behind.
“It’s a nice place,” he says, turning a one-eighty to get a good look at it. “The Brightons didn’t do much in the way of decoration.”
“I’m sure it’ll stay that way,” Marianne shoves her hands in her cardigan. “I’m way too busy procrastinating.”
Luke turns to the cavernous fireplace, and his eyes fall on the vacant canvases. He smiles. Marianne smiles. “I’m sure your art will grace these walls,” his arms loop in the air to indicate the bare cabin surrounding them, “it’d be a breath of fresh air; all that color.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Marianne lingers behind him, careful to keep her eyes above the graceful curve of his shoulders, “I'm not the best with colors."
Luke turns; his expression is that of confusion. “The land isn’t grey. You should see it at sunset. Orange, crimson, gold...every color you’ve never seen.” He sounds defensive. Marianne holds her breath. “This land breathes color. At dawn it exhales the morning, and about noon it inhales the light and turns into every shade of blue and white. You just have to look deeper than the surface.”
“You really are a writer!” Marianne jests, nervously. Her hands twitch in her cardigan. Her hands twitch in her cardigan. Duh. I mean, just go ahead and state the obvious. Fool.
Luke shrugs, and that look of familiarity is void in his eyes. It’s replaced by another one she can’t decipher. He turns so they’re out of her line of vision. Cold. Vacant. Marianne sighs and wishes her mouth wasn’t quite as large as the hills behind them.
“Would you like something to drink? I have—“ then she remembers she has nothing. The empty refrigerator is silent and berating. She wants to kill herself.
Luke saves her from humiliation. “I’m fine, thanks.” He smiles, sheepishly unenthused. “I should be going, anyway,” he adds, taking a step to the door. “My typewriter is calling me. Thank you so much for your hospitality.” He doesn’t sound as grateful as he’s pretending.
For a moment, Marianne wants to reach out and take a hold on Luke’s arm, pulling him back. She imagines his surprised, then blissful look. He’ll bend over and say something comforting. Instead, she just sighs. She’s not a person for stepping out of the comfort zone. “Thank you.” Is what she says.
Luke nods, as if he’s just read her mind, opens the door, then half turns, surprising her. “You know,” he says, that jovial smile arising once more, “you’re welcome to come over anytime. It does get quite lonely up here.”
She smiles, sadly. She’ll make an apologetic and utterly pathetic excuse for herself. She’ll be busy, something about her car. The works. “Will do,” is what comes out of her mouth.
Then, Luke really is gone, and Marianne is left alone to further inflict self-wounds upon her metaphorical mind. She tries not to cry. She wishes for the dry, light heat of New Mexico. A bird chirps outside her window.
~~~
Later that night, Marianne lies awake on her mattress. Four blankets lie upon her, sweaty and thick. She shivers. Her muscles ache. Four hours of heavy lifting, and she’s finished the stage of arrival. She waits for it to settle in, but she’s too hopeless for hope.
She thinks about Luke. She thinks about a Fox. She turns. The light streaming in from the curtain-less window is really quite beautiful. It looks as if thousands of tiny wings float in a suspended beam of moonlight. She reaches out a tentative hand to touch it, and feels nothing. Her skin looks tickled-smooth and pale. The rest of her arm is shrouded in darkness.
The moon is bright and gorgeous. It looks swollen, fertile. A fully blossomed fruit ripe for the picking. She gazes until her eyes hurt. The hills are a giant mass of different shades of black. The snow is silvery, bathed in the spectacular light.
If she turns her head a certain angle towards the remote peaks, she can almost hear it again. The tuneless vibrato:
Guess who now holds thee?
Death, you said
but there the silver answer rang
not death, but love.
There is a sad, torpid movement in the air. She tries to form the words on the breath of air, and two things happen very quickly, very quietly: the air she breaths turns into a pane of mist on the glass window, and the fox reappears.
She almost loses it among the patches of black, black, and even darker black. It stands, legs spread apart. Teeth grin crookedly at her. The light covers it in a coat of glory.
Her heart catches in her throat. She knows she’s being watched, she’s seen. She feels as though she’s been caught red-handed. Guilty, the fox seems to say, Guilty, Guilty.
Guilty of what, she wonders. The fox blinks. She is overtaken by a sudden and overpowering urge to run out into the snow, barefoot, and catch the fox. She can almost feel the warm body. Fingers in fur. She slips out of bed, instantly regretting it. The floor freezes her toes.
Marianne runs lightly to the door, balancing on the balls of her feet. An oozing excitement reverberates through her body and up her spine. She sucks in her breath as she pulls the door open to face a hinterland of snow and ice. The cold shapes her form and escapes down the crevices of her nightgown, through the strands of her hair.
The fox is just within sight, panting beneath a giant pine. Its eyes glint with an untold magic. Marianne braces herself, and places one barefoot into the snow. At first, the powdery ground bites hard into her heels and stings her toes. She takes another step, then another. Soon she is walking, running, hopping along in the snow. Her feet turn numb, and then she feels no pain or cold.
The fox turns, but stays put. Marianne sees her legs racing, sees herself moving, but feels nothing. The fox tilts its head and she draws closer, agitated and out of breath. She stops within a foot. She watches her breath curl into the air and disappear, watches the fox, who is as silent as her drifting thoughts. It shifts slightly, drawing her from her frost-bitten reverie.
Our hands would touch—
“Excuse me?” Marianne speaks, feeling idiotic. “Is someone there?” She glances about in the forest. Why did she come here?
The fox shifts again, and Marianne can’t help but notice the hard glint in its eyes. She stares, unwilling to let herself look elsewhere. The voice starts up again, like a little record playing in the corner of her existence.
Our hands would touch for all the mountains
and heaven rolled between us at the end
“Who is that?” she shouts, anxiously. “I know you said something, I—“
The fox leaps at her, quite suddenly. Marianne closes her eyes against her shock, falls backwards. Wet fur brushes her cheek but nothing happens. She lies buried in snow. When she finds the courage to reopen her eyes, she is face to face with the fox. It is panting, its giant tongue vibrating in a rhythmic pattern; its heart is a little drum pounding mercilessly upon her skin. With one paw on her chest and one eye on the horizon, Marianne finally stays to listen.
Our hands would touch for all the mountains
and heaven rolled between us at the end
we should but vow the faster for the stars.
Marianne is not a believer of the supernatural. She has never been too religious, never been too superstitious. She agrees that what she does is a simple, down-to-earth kind of work, that she is not in need of any magical nonsensical nonsense. It comes to her as a surprise then, that she listens and accepts, without speaking, that this funny little creature is indeed a deep poet.
The fox has stopped breathing. It has taken her a few minutes to notice this subtle change of pace, the slowing of the heart and the pausing of the panting. She instinctively reaches out her forefinger and traces a little curl of white upon the fox’s throat. In a flash, the fox jumps up and races on a few feet. Stopping, he looks back. Marianne has the sensation that he is playing some sort of game with her.
She brings herself to an upward position, watching the fox from her elbows. It tilts its head in a familiar gesture, and she acknowledges him, standing. She believes she should feel silly, childish, following a fox in the wee hours of the morn. The sky is starting to fade like a pair of jeans, one blue lighter than the next.
The sun peeps out with one ray, then two. The fox is running up the slope, and she is following with steady feet. She has the feeling she is safe, secure. With the fox, she is not a part of nature, she is nature. The fox, the pine trees, the snow, the frozen air. They are her friends, they are her lovers.
Only an hour before sunrise, when the yellow star shakes it’s shyness off like a coat of armor, Marianne arrives, gasping for air with every inch of her life. The fox stands proudly on the edge of a valley more spectacular than any painting in any gallery. She inches towards him and sits on a glimmering black rock.
Grasping the sharp edges of the rock with the palms of her hands, she soaks in the world that had been hiding beyond the perimeters of her world. Below her, thousands of newborn plants are frosty in crystals more beautiful than any diamond. The ground is unmarked and undamaged. She breathes in as the sun makes its timid appearance. There is the fox, watching her with one eye and the plains with the other. There is the land that has filled the ditches in her heart with gold. There is the feeling that no matter where she strays, there will always be a place she can call home.
Our hands would touch for all the mountains
and heaven rolled between us in the end.
In loving memory of my aunt, Joellen Spiegel
1967-2007
