At a Meeting of Scholars I Think of Aunt Bea

Studies in attribution
wreathe the room
like fox heads around

my Aunt Bea’s neck
in 1947.
Fox fur was big then.

So were Packards,
big bouncy boats
(ours was emerald green)

swaggering through Houston streets,
manned by fashionable dames
in fox-fur stoles.

And I sat and swallowed
in the back seat, Packard
purring, fox heads flying.

She said, “Their eyes are fake!
They came from Marshall Fields,
half-price, in ’38!”

I didn’t care.
Deaf to dates and names,
Oblivious to year and make,

I only thought of foxes
and how they lived
and what they ate.