DAVID HASKINS - Winner of Individual Poem Award at the Literary Awards

Urban Fox


In the filtered light from a street lamp

at the end of a cobbled alley

she hunches down to watch me

and seeing I mean her no harm

slinks to the farthest corner

her stealth drenched in shadow.

Long ago the city fortress

called us from the starved land.

Now it brings the wild among us,

miles from forest, field and brook,

this ragged waif plagued with mange,

opportunist fallen from grace.

A disenfranchised citizen-savage

scavenger of human refuse,

she prowls the markets of south London

to feed her mewling kits, their den

warmed with hair she pulled from her skin.

She shows no pride in owning the night -

like a beleaguered spy come in from the cold

or some old drunk nestled under cardboard -

depending on no one’s kindness,

as fearless as the rats she beds down with

and, if she has to, eats.

I want her to be the fox the prince’s

horse and hound and redcoat riders

hunt around my Tiffany shade,

never run to ground or torn apart

when blood rises in the teeth of dogs.

Or the glass-eyed fox my late aunt draped

around her neck at Sunday service,

the perfect tail curved down one shoulder,

head and front paws down the other,

watching me reach up to touch

the soft seductive fur without

interrupting her solemn prayers.

I don’t belong in this survivor’s street;

for now she knows she has the upper hand.

One day she’ll chew her black boot off

to free her from a leg hold trap

and all her cunning will bleed out slow

the wild, waning in her slit eyes

the mysterious sisterhood of fox.

Originally published in The Saving Bannister 25, published by the Canadian Authors Association, Niagara.

Editor's note:  Congratulations David for winning the Individual Poem category at the Hamilton Arts Council's Annual Literary Awards Gala!  Well done!