“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”
       Mary Oliver
       (from “Lead.” New And Selected Poems:
      Volume Two, Beacon Press, 2005, p. 54.)

Our neighborhood fox is waiting
in the middle of the street,

early morning breaking up
of darkness, 4:00 a.m., sitting tall,

a prophet misjudged, slipping
across nurtured lawns,

claiming the ire of shepherd dogs,
especially Lucy who warns the man

again and again against walking out
to cross the street, laying

the news of the day at a neighbor’s
front door. It is no easy path to walk,

grieving blows to the heart,
babies and toddlers, their mothers,

wrenched from the sleep of innocents
into Darkness of what cannot be conceived–

the clatter of horror, its Breaking News.
The fox, neighborhood sentinel, attentive

to what the man, this poet displaced
as the prophet, harbors in his heart.

The fox’s tail is full, available to sweep a space
for the prophecy of light dividing the darkness–

and there is evening
and there is morning, one day.

*Notes:

“Sabbath”: To Cease. To Desist.
Final couplet: Genesis 1: 5