Red

All the while

I was teaching

in the state of Virginia

I wanted to see

gray fox.

Finally I found him.

He was in the highway.

He was singing

His death song.

I picked him up

And carried him

Into a field

While the cars kept coming.

He showed me

How he could ripple

How he could bleed.

Goodbye I said

To the light of his eye

As the cars went by.

Two mornings later

I found the other.

She was in the highway.

She was singing

Her death song.

I picked her up

And carried her

Into the field

Where she rippled

Half of her gray

Half of her red

While the cars kept coming.

While the cars kept coming.

Gray fox and gray fox.

Red, red, red.

Once, when I was a teen I was in the car with my father when across the road flew two flickers in front of the car ahead of us.  One made it across safely, the other not.  The injuring car kept going. My father stopped. Wordless we went to the side of the road to see what might be done for the stricken bird.  There was the male, quite dead, and so amazingly beautiful in his stillness. Over his body was his mate, uninjured, unmoving - protecting?  Saying goodbye?  I didn’t know what we could do for either bird, so I looked to my father who had tears falling down his face.  While the three of us stood vigil, the cars kept going by, the drivers unaware of the beauty and tragedy they were passing by.

We are the cars Mary speaks of.  We participate in death, of course, for we are alive and we die and we cannot escape this interdependence that claims us.  Perhaps though there are more songs of death we could hear, could write, and could sing.  I will give this day to hear, write, and sing the songs around me. 

Will you join me?  And then tell me what you songs you partook of?