I don’t know why I always imagined
the fields in dusk—the little flame-
tailed foxes dragging their torches
behind. Do you think, as they rushed from their doors,
the Philistines saw how beautiful it was?

It must have been: the purple twilight
crushed against the grain like the velvet
of a noblewoman in adultery, her robe slumped
to a mosaic floor; the breeze slipping
through the guard hairs of the foxes like a quiet kiss.

God, how we love what is in pain—how it reminds
us of youth. You know that the sun was created
setting on a Tuesday? I think Samson
knew . . . but where was I? Yes,
looking out on the fields, on stalks become candles, 

on foxes, coats rusting in the gloom 
against the golden crop. The rabbis
hunt every letter of Torah
for sport, shoot each with a thousand arrows,
yet the Talmud glosses this only once,

when R. Bar Abba tells us the fox
was a symbol of renegation—the only creature
that runs in reverse. But don’t we all?
Don’t we run from the Ark and the Tabernacle 
still turning toward them, enraptured? Yes.

We are on fire, but still must breathe—
little kits gulping air
as we twist and writhe around each other.
In a moment, all will be desolation and burnt
hair, but for now, it is lights gay

as summer bonfires, bobbing up
and down the rows of the vineyards and the oliveyards,
the rigid ranks of wheat and barley,
the tangled foxes snarling as they spin
and snap like firecrackers. How I wish

I could make you see it as I did—a child
who had lost nothing, felt nothing,
never asked what happened to the foxes. 
Sometimes I wish I had never asked.
Sometimes I think that the rabbis were wise.

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Reyzl Grace (reyzlgrace.com / @reyzlgrace) is a poet/librarian with work in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other magazines, as well as an editor for Psaltery & Lyre. She lives in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.)