Aaand back to the foxes, because today we’ve been asked to write about our personal connection to something in the natural world, for example an animal. Like a fox? Yes, like a fox.
Brief Encounter
To endure the late walk home,
all buses gone to roost, and stars
muffled in sodium clouds; to pass
graceless retail parks framed
cloddishly in jobsworth shrubs,
dull with after-hours; to skirt
heavy-headed buddleia guarding
chain link and litter, exhaling
purple rankness; to navigate
the emptied junction, on the round-
about the inexplicable silver balls,
big as bales and rusting quietly
in the plain sight of the darkened
carwash; and then, to see him
in the lit delta of the goods
vehicle entrance, his spirit level
spine balancing caution, curiosity.
Brief arrow of blaze; to meet,
unexpected yet unmistakeable,
the most beautiful thing in the world.
This is ace! I love urban foxes and your poem sums up that excitement at seeing one in that setting. That slight rush when it looks back, aware and busy simultaneously. I used to live in Manchester and once I was putting the key in the front door and a vixen ran across my feet. I was so shocked! It was there and then gone. As luck would have it, a neighbour was going into his house at the same time, so I said, “Did you see that?” He replied that he has as the fox disappeared into the gardens and sheds behind our houses. It’s funny now I live in the middle of nowhere and I see foxes so in frequently, darting into a hedge but they’re not the streetwise fox you capture here, just country bumpkins.
Oh wow, I’ve never been that close to one, what a great story! Thanks – I’m so glad you like the poem, and that I’ve described that feeling well enough to be recognisable.