I found the fox frozen at the end
of the river, tail wet and pallid as weather. 
Since then nothing was the same.
A friend lost their job. Another found 
three broken strands of their lover’s hair 
in a city they never visited.
The fifty yarrow stalks I had brought 
with me for divining were stolen,
until weeks later in some atrophied 
corner shop I thought I found them
but they were just sticks for making fire. 
Some days I read lines like the road
up and down is one and the same
and think that surely not, surely
water only knows to flow one way 
against the other. In dreams
the fox appears oh-so-morose, says
one must observe the proper rites.
All this time I have been trying
to divine some direction of truth
while the news spoke of flows, crossings. 
One night I followed the frayed end
of a voice past a hundred thousand 
untamed cities till I found the river again, 
but it was no longer the same river,
the same fox, the same I.