FOX FISHING

 

have you ever gone fishing

for a fox? baited a line

with a chicken neck, cast it out

into the buddleia and bracken

that swarm the railway tracks

Beeching’s gift to nature

 

not here to harm one but marvel at it

dare-dream fingers to muss sunburst fur

as though a new lover’s hair, have its eyes

meet mine, implicitly know

not all flesh is foe

 

an angler might tell you it’s the getaway

the calm       but my little heart beat so fast

a rustle in the underbrush

a starling unearthing, a thrush

but I’m imagining

bosky paths parting

a lone streetlight’s

watery orange glare

a lone streetfighter’s

wary orange stare

hue of a life vest

of a solar flare

 

I was four and four months

when a fox burst

into my bedroom

through a window left open

all summer until then

I tried to shout for Mum

but only my eyes screamed

the fox, stunned likewise, froze

an unpinned grenade on my bed

its environment transposed

Star Wars figures and football posters

its brush – bushy, unearthly –

laid out across Charger, my toy rhino

                                                              and best friend

 

there are things communicated

intrinsic truths passed in the flash

of an unseeing eye, connections

that can’t be explained

or verbalised, when you understand

you are but an organism, whatever tech

all that white noise insists we need              pitched to us!

us of tissue and bark and stubborn weed!

of fur and fin and brackish bleed!

 

those times you think you dream

your life, that it’s out by the tracks

the trees, the leaves, yours

to inhale – the very earth

to pause and breathe out

mulch and musk, den and dirt

 

I never knew this as woods

snarled and gnarly, dense as chemo

before the neat rows of produce goods

grassy banks bulldozed for show homes

the few spared trees – pollarded, beheaded –

by which I glide, blood of beast, agrestal-boned

I multiply in my mind until I’m stood

face-to-face with lynx, wolf, with bear

there be dragons here

 

a tentative tug, lightning

down the line       then nothing       a pounding of silence

before a second fierce bite pulls the rod down

my heart yelping, breath short

feet, braced, planted in the earth

I pull the tip up, begin to reel in

         this isn’t a fishing rod, it’s a timeline

 

the wind drops away to a soundless lull

just a thin line separating us as animals

something real, something beautiful

just beyond those trees                at the right angle

 

copyright Ash Dickinson