A Trick of Sunlight: Poems

Getting Away

Getting Away Once, when I was a child of seven or eight, I turned a corner on a wooded path And saw a fox a few feet from my face. We stood stock-still and took each other in: Instinctively, I looked down at his paws; He stared at me a moment, then he turned And loped away downhill, between the trees, Unhurried, but inexorably gone. His paws had all been there, I’d counted them, And so he couldn’t be that fox, the fox Some serious grown-up had described for me, The one whose inadvertent paw had stepped On steel that sprang shut, snap (the man had snapped His fingers), just like this: he gripped my arm, Then asked how brave I was. Could I have done What that fox did? He’d gnawed the fur and flesh Down to the bone, imagine how that hurt, Then cracked the bone, chewed through the lot, and so Escaped, leaving the keeper only this: And here he’d slipped a paw into my hand, Soft, small, and lifeless, with no blood on it. There was another story I was told Around that time, which in my mind belonged With that hallucinatory, bad moment. The village churchyard had an ancient grave 3 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Whose slab had moved, so that a gap had opened Through which the darkness showed. One moonless night A group of scallywags had dared each other To run and put a hand beneath the slab. One had agreed, and, as the others waited Crouched down beside the churchyard wall, they’d heard A terror-stricken scream, and run off home. The next day their companion was discovered: When he had turned to join his friends, a branch Had snagged his jersey’s sleeve, as if a hand Reached out to hold him, and his heart had stopped. The fox then or the boy: which would I be? 4 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...