Fox Poem by Val Morehouse

Covering ground like lightning the fox-tongue coats
rerun other hunts and shake out last coins of laughter.
One stirrup cup, and they mount to run
the beast from her hollow.

Percussive clap of breath and leather, together
horseflesh and fox erupt through the red froth of sunlight.
Stunned by the blare of houndsong, plain people
stop dead to watch, hands dropped in rough sympathy

on fork and hoe for some creature pressed
so hard by hell’s own commotion.
Soon enough the cunning of the henyard
Is damned by surprise.

Flushed with a back twinkle of eyes,
a chuckle of paws tumbling headlong through turnstile,
and pinwheels of shattered dew and flowers,
fox shoots the rush of pasture, wall, brook, bush.

Surrounded by hound-howls relentless as fiddleheads running,
in her gaping aria of fright she jinks
and jumps straight into the open jaws,
a titian pour of softnesses.

Never long these uproars of horse and hound
before hands up with the varmit’s brush,
a limp dangle, its eyes still wide
though empty of meadows.

Red seed swept above the velvet seethe of grasses
toward a slow destination, a distant twilight of
life unsheathed, the fox gains
safe where none can follow.