Rosina Talamantes

FOXES IN SNOWFALL, LONDON


3:00 a.m., red foxes cruise Kensington Gardens
emerging from coiffed vegetation, vulpes emblems
of precision. Their eyes sting with intelligence
signifying a mind fused with hunger or sorrow,
from maker to made. In the I Ching a little fox appears
crossing the Great Water, an inner geography
cobbled by sages & saints. Christmas in two days,
snow a language of wispy chunks, an Atlantic away
from my own school of thought. What divides
humans is a fall – lassitude, fear, a cosmos
of erroneous desires. These foxes worry nothing
for that babe in Bethlehem. “We have own star
insensible human,” they glower as headlights
from a black cabbie pierce the swagger of their trot.

Rosina Talamantes lives in California with her husband and two Chihuahuas. She is thankful for her MFA from Bennington College and the generosity of the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared in 5AM, Picture Postcard Press, Ruah, and has poems forthcoming in Tiferet and Chaparral. She is working on her first book of poems - Mexican in Vermont.