The Fox

Poetry festival 20th June 2000

The Fox
In memory of a fox who ate all my hens in winter 1998!!!!

Shadows are broken
In the face of the moon
The morning breaths like a baby
And the village is dozing
He crawls down the sleepy hens
Put his claws into them like lift-fork
But no wall hears
And no eye sees
Except the idiot moon
Staring at the night of March
Tinting the sprawling trees

The crow cock cries with anguish
But no one hears the pain
The time stopped clicking
The shadows stopped prowling
The cricket stopped chanting
Every vein stopped breathing
Like the breezeless quiet sea
The red ink colored the pen
The space is no longer there

Two hens stayed behind
Like battered forgotten boats
Abandoned by the storm
Broken hearts
Broken feathers
Most of all grieving for the crow
Who filled their life with pecks,
With joy and many many eggs
Who stood on the rock like a tiger
Shouting for every moon

Next day the furry tail
Came again
Gliding gliding like a fairy
Walking like a whisper
Sliding like a mob
Liking his ivory teeth
Burning his floodlight eyes
Brandishing his pointed ears
Listening for every sound
And every bouncing echoes
Waiting for the farmers boots


The two hens freeze to death
Crawled to the cornered wall
Squeezing onto the mouse hole
Jumping onto the water bowl
Pushing against the mesh
The spider jumped away
Like a bouncing yo-yo
He jumped on them like a dart
Only to feel the strangling rob
Tightens on his throat
Like the grip of a hunter's hand
Like the narrow burrow that he once
Could not could not escape

The time stopped clicking
The shadows stopped moving
The cricket stopped singing
The red ink colored the fur
The tail stopped breathing
The shadows stopped prowling
The space was no longer there