Poetry | Thoroughfare | Mary Ann Schaefer

Thoroughfare listen
The fox does not keep
to regular trails.  When
dusk descends, the fox
doesn’t commute along
hard straight paths,
oblivious of reality
according to the USGS,
never being more than 12.5
miles, on average, away
from a road, any of 4 million
miles of mapped roads.  Foxes
never travel in lines that channel
into gridlocks; trotting a gadabout
gait, (slow-slow, quick-quick), they
escape, quite deliberately, into
shadows.  No go-stop-go controlled
access, neither entrance nor exit
ramps feeding concrete multilane cloverleaf overpasses intersecting underpass expressways, no
signs for which way, how far or how fast,
no flashing lights rumble strips pot holes nor shoulders for pulling over to change
a flat.  All through the moonless
night, a fox gallivants waywardly, wicked and wanton, zig-
zagging, side-tracking, gone astray, never lost, no
honking, no
	road rage, no
		high-speed chase, never
			a head-on crash or bleeding
				out before an ambulance can
					arrive, no sobriety
						tests, no
witnesses but glowing
eyes like falling stars
that blink just a wink-
like flicker on re-entry.
By dawn, each and every
fox has already traipsed
unseen along the inner
avenue toward home
without once wondering
how to get there.