The Trap

“. . . the way

The night knows itself with the moon.”

-Rumi, The Big Red Book

Nights running my husband set the trap, rammed the Havahart between the chicken coop’s gate, looped the wire as if it, like the hens the fox desired, might tantalize the fox—the one who, like the night, “knows itself with the moon;” as if the fox might forget what it knew and walk into that strange mechanical den. Nights running my husband dreamed the fox into forgetting what it knew of what’s what and what is not: the scent left by fences and houses, the geography shifted by moonlight and cloud, the landscape of shadow where the hay mice snoozed and the hens roosted. Nights running my husband dreamed. But at dawn, while my husband dozed like a god, the trap was tripped by a skunk.

- Connie Wieneke 

Connie Wieneke lives in Wilson, Wyoming.