I had a 'moment' whilst walking along the lane this week.
Messing about taking shots like this where, with the sun behind me, I look about ten feet tall and as if I'm on stilts...
I am standing completely still and wishing my legs really were this long when I looked up and glimpsed something ahead of me in the lane..
Now the times this happens and I don't have the camera with me/ switched on / pointing in the right direction are too numerous to mention, because there is a point in the lane just up ahead which I call Foxgate (where I showed you the sheep on Friday) and where, if I am going to see a fox dash across, this spot is most likely.
We stood and stared at each other for a few very long seconds before he realised I was the foe and took off, but to get this close to a rural fox is very unusual...
and of course the perfect excuse, if I needed one, for this...
The Thought Fox
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
Ted Hughes
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