C.M. Rivers

Think of the way clouds roll across a big sky.  Think of the embroidery of a spider, how hard it works to put food on the table.  Think how familiar you are with the contents of your wallet, purse, kitchen cabinets, the scent of your own pillows.

I wonder if this is how birds feel about their nests, the lake-shore, that meadow there, this hillside over here.  What would it feel like to make your bed on a riverbank, to have a stone as a nightstand?  Your lamp is the moon.  The stillness, your book collection.

In this very moment, however, walking the dividing path between meadow and woods, I feel so much better just knowing there’s a fox who lives around here, in the company of his own nose and tail, and whatever family he might have.

His fur is not the red of all the cliches, not the red of the slushy I had in Rhode Island on a 90 degree day, not the red of the cherry-lime rickey I ordered at Tom’s Diner in Brooklyn containing a lifetime’s worth of grenadine, but the red produced by things of the earth.

I wish him luck.