A Glasgow Fox

by Juliet Antill

This fox is not Hughes’ fox.
There is no night, no forest, no thought of fox.
No clock ticks.
There’s only the animal herself
waiting on a sunlit embankment.
A storybook fox with a lustrous coat
and hen-coop stare.

She, of course, has no idea of fox.
She is scent, breath, trails.
She’s the vetch tickling her belly
and the sharp hot stink of train.
After we pass she’ll drop down
through the long grass and cross the rails,
enter the dark hole of the head.