Now We Come to Ticks and Tocks
       

Totally giddy and grinning as I recall the fox we happened upon,
its eyes the curious eyes of a toddler.
That night a full moon

like a wheel of brie. We were always playing The Garden Game,
my daughter and I, which I'd picked up for a dollar
at Goodwill. Entertained by cards

that said we'd forgotten to mulch, to nourish the humous,
which of course we pronounced hummus,
she being a vegan and all.

But now she's fifteen, another word for sulky, disgusted,
annoyed, as in you really should consider
the application of eyeliner. The moon

told me I was almost fifty-nine. What I told it was how
it would never be a place where arugula seeds
would grow, but by then it was morning,

the moon on the other side of the world, the clouds and wind
friends we like to gossip with, all the while thinking
she's that fox, not as in she's such a fox,

more in the way the fox stayed close, kept going in
and out of sight, never getting within thirty feet.
We are wasting precious time,

Miss Everett used to say. Well, sure, honey,
isn't that the human condition?
Waddling through time

like the duck my daughter turned me into? We christened the fox
Mr. Fox, and she told me Fox-n-Sox freaked her out,
scrambled her brain with the chicks and bricks,

with the quick trick chick stack, made her feel like a slug
in salt. Then she let me spin again, and I told her
I'd always love foxes.

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Copyright © 2021 Martha Silano All rights reserved
from Sugar House Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission