Wild Visitor: Waiting for Gray Fox's Return

Thursday, July 31. 5:30 a.m.

The above image is not mine.

I sit on a small couch with my son Patrick squeezed beside me. He's watching My Little Pony on a laptop as I read. But, my periphery stands guard, looking out the front door.

I see a hydrangea flower, a lavender globe in the lower left of the door's frame; its backdrop is the grooved bark of a pitch pine, straight-backed and rising out of the frame.

Buddhist flags, a string of color (blue, white, red, yellow and green) cross the entire frame, ending before complete.

Beyond, a flower garden, a few orange lily buds yet to bloom, and a giant sunflower at the edge of the empty road, its face turned towards light to come.

I imagine the gray fox stepping into this frame as it did two days earlier.

I picture its shy but swift step materializing bit by bit from behind the pitch pine, crossing in front of the flower garden, under the flags, a moment so brief, as it comes-- and then I leap!

"What are you doing?'' Patrick calls, as I run to the door.

"The fox, I thought I saw the fox."

A tumble of gray limbs had streaked across the frame. I open the door and step outside.

The air is cold.

I walk around the corner of the yard, my nerves alert. I flinch when a branch cracks underfoot.

I look around the back, down the forsythia edge.

Was it a bird? I wonder. Was it my imagination?

I go back inside, returning to my place on the couch, next to Patrick, who returns to My Little Pony.

And I look to the pitch pine, under the Buddhist flags, and sense the moment is already gone.