Passers-by

National Parks Service, 2015

My mother didn’t see it, but I did—a
gray fox, tail tip black as the burnt pine
stumps we’d passed. It was hurrying
across the asphalt road, towards the
woods, stopped while we drove past.
A long look over its shoulder. It met my
stare with its own—yellow eyes in ash
gray (a gold inclusion in smoky quartz)
so feral, so present—and then gone, off
into its own day as we went into ours.