a dream or a fox
After Lucille Clifton
plane landing in berlin, i saw a fox
on the tarmac
beneath the wind, the fuselage,
its eyes barbed like concertina
wire. was it a dream i do not know
and dangerously, i took
it as a sign my ache would end.
it didn’t, but that’s
okay. what would we all give
for moments like that: pure hope
materializing on the bodies
of animals we’ve seen lurching
in those places they don’t belong,
how they refuse to recede,
how they hold on,
proving every human wrong.