Fox and Geese

Not for nothing did we play Fox and Geese as kids. As many games do, it bore the coding of ancient, even primal, dynamics of what wild is. 
Today when the fox appears in its circuit from the ravine along the blufftops, the goose hits the pond with a clatter and splash, a clash, having long ago, that's long ago, figured water as safety from land-bound predators.
Today--or maybe at this time of year when a geese is, as I have been saying, as big as a Kenmore 835--the fox isn't interested, engaging instead in scratching his chin, rolling in the grass, taking the sun. But for a moment there, the goose was stuck with that fear/flight impulse, a permanent imprint on goosehood.
My own impulse, the least interesting one in play here, is to take a picture, as if I'm so far out of the natural world I must run to sample any evidence of its existence.

Soon everyone settled. I sat out where the fox had been.

But I wouldn't hurt a fly.