Monday, 7 February 2011

THE DEATH FOX

overnight, as the frost made blades
of the grass, it had dragged
itself onto the lawn, 
and now lay with one back leg drawn up: 
out in the open, which every fox avoids.


i thought at first, looking
from an upstairs window, it was a cat.
i felt my muscles harden, the indrawn breath,
but its plume of tail was unmistakeable.


i went down, feeling reluctance 
and awe.  this visitor, soft-furred, 
outstretched and fleet even in death,
lay on its side: still running.


how had it died?  no bite,
no shocking gape in the flank. 
it looked as if it had been struck down
in flight.  gassed?


i stood a pace away, my steps
hollowed in frost.  
the pelt was cream and sorrel.  black
limbs, delicate.  i'd never seen a fox so close -


but nor was a fox there now;
even in the half-open eye:
no fox looking out. 


trespassing, i photographed
its mute departure;
the huge silence of it filling the garden.
it deserved sanctuary,
but i delayed.  


the fox
had come to me to bear witness;
i could not simply bury it
alongside its death.







ECLIPSE

who stole the moon?
there it was
polishing its saucepan face


when suddenly 
the old black rat of the night
crept up:  bite, bite, bite 


bit by bit
it bit it till it bled
red, red


but soon, fish-slithery
the moon slid out
from the rat's paws


and back to white
it ran across the sky
with many new bite marks
on its pitted saucepan face