June : Hungry Fox

Hungry Fox

She stands atop an ancient burial mound 

at the edge of a grove of beech trees, shining leaves 

mahogany red in the fading light of evening.

Motionless like some rustic sculpture,

her russet coat reflects the bronze sun sinking low 

into the welcoming arms of the western fen.

A soft bark of warning to her quarrelsome cubs,

she moves swiftly into the silent shadows

looking for a plump chicken or a young rabbit

for her hungry children.

Along dark paths, across the rickety bridge

mirrored silver in the old canal’s sluggish water.

Facing into the cold east wind so that her prey 

may not catch her scent, she lopes across 

last year’s stubble into the cherry orchard. 

A fugitive Derbyshire Red hen, its rich brown feathers

tipped with black, has scratched out a nest 

beneath the hedge and, peering bemused at the 

soft padded interloper, dies in an instant

as strong yellow teeth snap her elegant neck. 

A farmhouse dog barks and whines, high pitched

as if crying to the moon, the vixen gathers up 

her kill and slips noiselessly into the gathering darkness. 

Skirting the bramble thicket she moves slowly now,

with smooth prolonged steps like a hunting cat,

towards the weed green greasy pond 

where ducks sleep their soft whistling sleep

beneath a pale canopy of thin stars.

 Amidst a strangled shrieking, much flapping of wings, 

and a great cacophony of quacking, she pounces. 

She seizes her victim, and as darkness

overwhelms the fading landscape,

heads for her earth and her hungry kits. 

Undeterred by the solid weight of duck and hen

she trots lightly along the woodland path,

lit now by the rising moon and heavy with the scent 

of honeysuckle promising sweet nectar to a cloud 

of long tongued moths whose feathery antennae 

have smelled out a rich nocturnal feast.

The trees sigh and compose themselves for sleep.

Back to the the beech trees the vixen comes,

to the boisterous greeting of her ravenous cubs.

On this bank where now her family plays

she remembers the eerie notes of a horn, blown

as hounds tore her mother into a dozen bloody pieces.

She herself is feared, stoned, shot at and shunned,

all because she must kill to feed her children.

But as the first clear light of dawn appears she sleeps,

and dreams of a new world which will accept 

that some must hunt - so all may eat.

Illustration by Liz                                                                   Naomi