Bernadette Hall
The Fox
The fox is a single red stroke that cuts across
the clearing. The colour seems to hang like smoke,
you can almost see where she has come from.
Her musk (though you can smell nothing)
is specific like a thumbprint on the air.
It isn't raining but there's a kind of wet
on your face, a stickiness of insect juices dropped.
The fox is rusty-dull, discreet, not radiant or hot
or pulsing. Not agitated. Not randy.
She is completely dream and intelligence
sliding through the wet grass, the stinging nettles,
the little brittle helmets of dry seed,
a flower or two, relics of the drizzly, petalled summer.
The lyric fox goes down to the creek
where dark and dankness will mask her scent
and the lovely rosette of her face.
She'll be able to pause there, for a while, sip water
while the dogs swirl and bell in front of the Big House.
