My Friend Is Visited By Three Wild Foxes Poem by Quentin Kirk

My friend is Visited by Three Wild Fox Cubs

that feel at home around his country place.
They are the vanguard of The Great Return,
The Great Return when some distant human generation
will make peace
with the Earth

When it happens, word will go to and from every butterfly,
every songbird:
MAN HAS MADE PEACE WITH THE EARTH

We will put out all our street lights,
children will sit out at night
to see the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the North Star.
We will make peace with each other.

Yesterday I bought wood from an Indian lady down our road. We tried to figure the price in Indian language (two plus two equals four true in all languages?) . We got mixed up and laughed, When she figures, she looked off toward the mountains (does she have it written up there somewhere?) and she mumbled in a thousand year old language and giggled. Finally we counted together in Spanish. When we got to twenty we both went fast and laughed because the twenties are easy. She said her name is Maria. They all say that. Maybe they think it is the only name I know. Indian women never forget a kindness, a smile, and months from now someone in the market will smile and wave to me and it may be her, thought, they all look a little alike to me and I have befriended many. She took me to a different pile of lumber that she said is dryer. She was concerned about my project.

And when man makes his peace with the Earth, every Maria will know,
and every fox cub and fish at the bottom of the sea.
Will-o-the-wisp will return to every dark ravine.
We will re-learn intrinsic joys,
Religion will return with kindness, mystery, poetry.
We will gather at night to sleep in circles in the old way;
will know each others' nightly rhythms, sleeping sounds;
will comfort ourselves in noble warm idealism.
And we will know
that we will never
be lonely
again.