Folk Tale

Chelsea Woodard

               for Nonny Hogrogian

In the story, I remember a hungry young fox 

         rendered in pastels. He has stolen 

 from a strict-mannered woman in town, his tail's been cut off, his lot 

         cast to repay her: stomach still swollen 

with her Guernsey cow's milk, his head hung 

         as he trudges the sad route she has mapped 

 for him. In the story, I remember bright sun 

         glaring, the fox hunched and tailless, his tongue lolling, lapping 

at air, his shame-path dry and sorrowful. 

         And reading, I knew the author had lived 

 in our house -- rust-colored shutters, fall- 

         wormed, rattling rose hips, frost, pewter-halled air. 

And in the book, every page held a trade: a pail 

         bartered for rare, lazuli beads, a brown-speckled egg 

 for milled grain, straw for the mule pulling 

         the plow. And I knew that each time, the fox had begged 

for their pity -- a sack of clean down, a gold coin, a gift -- 

         and that he'd at last made it back, the cold pail 

 handle clenched in his teeth, milk sloshing the step 

         of the stern woman's house. And I pictured the blood-matted tail 

handed back to him, dragged over our slab-granite walk, 

         smelled the freezing ground 

 swelling -- stumbled with apples, damp now, half rotten -- 

         the author's fingers rust-smudged from the work, 

mine smeared with the chalk dust we found 

         decades later on baseboards and rimed sills of doors -- 

 the fine powder set into skin, each tenuous history 

         heart-learned, unwritten.