In honor of National Poetry Month, I’m sharing some ekphrastic poetry I wrote this past year. Ekphrastic poems are written about works of art, most often visual art like paintings and sculpture, but they may be about a performance piece like dancing, acting, or film. This poem contemplates a painting by German Expressionist Franz Marc called The Fox, or sometimes The Foxes. Because Marc created this in a cubist style, he may be depicting one fox or many.
Franz Marc was drafted into the German army during World War I and was killed in action at the Battle of Verdun at the age of 36.
The painting was purchased by a Jewish investment banker in 1928. With the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, the banker was forced to sell his art collection to finance his and his family’s escape to South America. In recent years, his surviving family members made a restitution claim and the painting was returned to them in 2021.
Fox comes to me
in a dream
and tells me
they will protect me.
Beautiful fox
non-binary
cat/dog
male/female
unconstrained by labels
they are color and form.
My mother had a fox fur stole. I loved to dig my fingers into thick fur, wrap it around my shoulders, fasten with a tiny face that bit its own tail.
Singular fox
you are still
and
you are darting.
My eye pauses. My eye follows. I see all of you.
Your slender snout
your luscious left ear
dark eyes, slow blink,
orange-red tail
as round and fat
as a loaf of spongey bread.
You are every fox
silent and focused
dancing by river
padding through forest
dashing across a quiet bridge
at midnight.
I thought you were a feral cat, until you reached the edge. Diving into bushes, you whipped your magnificent tail around your body, and escaped into safety of darkness.
Remembering texture of dead fox stole, I wanted to embrace you, this living fox, but one cannot touch a dream guardian.
Yet you were solidity
to your young creator
the embodiment
of a mystical ideal
that died with him
at Verdun.
You were the ransom
paid to the Nazis,
a traveller passed
from hand to hand,
so recently restituted
to rightful possession,
you remain
the quivering energy
of the natural world
beckoning us
to surrender to
simultaneity,
to see beyond flatness
to abandon the prejudice
of a single perspective.
You are brilliant light,
aura emanating
from within
and without.
You are utterly wild.
