by Patricia Fargnoli
I saw the fox running by the side of the road
past the turned-away brick faces of the condominiums
past the Citco gas station with its line of cars and trucks
and he ran, limping, gaunt, matted dull haired
past Jim's Pizza, past the Wash-O-Mat,
past the Thai Garden, his sides heaving like bellows
and he kept running to where the interstate
crossed the state road and he reached it and he ran on
under the underpass and beyond it past the perfect
rows of split-levels, their identical driveways
their brookless and forestless yards,
and from my moving car, I watched him,
helpless to do anything to help him, certain he was beyond
any aid, any desire to save him, and he ran loping on,
far out of his element, sick, panting, starving,
his eyes fixed on some point ahead of him,
some possible salvation
in all this hopelessness, that only he could see.
- Share this Poem:
ABOUT THE POET ~
Patricia Fargnoli is an award-winning American poet and retired psychotherapist. She was the New Hampshire Laureate from December 2006 to March 2009. Fargnoli's books of poetry include Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999), winner of the May Swenson Book Award; Lives of Others (Oyster River Press, 2001); Small Songs of Pain (Pecan Grove Press, 2003); Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005) which won the Jane Kenyon Literary Award for Outstanding Poetry by a New Hampshire poet, and most recently, Then, Something, (also from Tupelo Press, 2009) which won the 2009 Foreword Review Best of the Year Silver Award in Poetry, and was an Honorable Mention for the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in magazines and literary journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, and others.
Last updated January 05, 2012