Gary Fox - Dissolve - The Dewdrop

“Dissolve” by poet Gary Fox is a place poem, woven with the interplay of stillness and motion, light emptying into darkness. The poem is inhabited by flora and fauna of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in coastal Virginia. The fade of day into night, heavy silence broken by the primal rhythms of waves, birds, and migration, “Dissolve” feels like a moment or a snapshot, but it also potentially contains hours. We wander its lines as long as we need to as readers.

Dissolve

Bald eagle on a post
at the top of a dune
flaps wings
exposing white tail

Ocean
slapping and breathing

On beach half shells
half dug in
grow long shadows

Stretched in the setting sun
on the way back
maritime grove burns

Between trunks and leaves
vulture
moves from Eastern Red Cedar

To Loblolly
deeper in the woods
long fingered wings

soars by trees
perfecting
an uprooted lean

Water oaks
with scarce tan leaves
let yellow-humped warblers
peep from branch

to branch
Going home
Queen Sound
Wire Narrows
Cockle Creek
are blue mirrors
reflect dying orange
Altostratus fade
into a thousand purples

Chincoteague Island N.W.R.

Gary Fox

Originally from Philadelphia, Gary Fox currently resides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He went from a neighborhood kid writing graffiti, to a hip-hop producer, to a Teamster, and now he is a retail manager, father and husband. He has published poems in Toho Journal, The Shore, High Shelf Press, Struggle Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press and Sea To Sky Review. He has a B.A. in English and a certificate in creative writing from The Pennsylvania State University. Twitter (x): @poetryfox