This dog fox has been out all night
leaving its scent on tree bark
loping its way across the golf course
into the grounds and the infra-red lights
in the fine morning mizzle
its killing face angular lean wary
legs too long and thin for its body
the powerhouse of the eyes taking in everything
tired of hotel rooms and wheelie bins
fast-food dinners the raucous mating in beer-vomit
dodging the wheels of intercontinental lorries
a migrant from the riverbank copses
urbanised by stinking hunger
by easy hunger
in back yards, industrial estates, parks
here by the back of the committee rooms
here by the fading moon
and the slim beam of the American army torch
where my thoughts are as numb and vacant:
no more love for me
or books, or naked limbs, or sudden possibilities
or lone journeys into the heart of things—
it stops and sniffs me from a yard or more
without fear
as if laughing from an elongated crooked mouth
and turns under the chicken-wire fence
the full weight and lightness in the sense of itself.
