The Trap

The Trap

Nights running my husband set the trap, rammed the Havahart between the chicken coop’s gateposts,

looped the wire as if it, rather than the hens the fox desired, might tantalize the fox—the one who, like

Rumi’s night, knows itself with the moon; as if the fox might forget what it knew and walk into that

strange mechanical lair. Nights running my husband dreamed the fox into forgetting what it knew of

what’s what and what is not: the scent left by fences and houses, the geography shifted by moonlight

and cloud, the landscape the shadows where the hay mice snoozed and the hens roosted. Nights

running my husband dreamed. But at dawn, while my husband dozed like a god, the trap had been

tripped by a skunk.