Poem-a-Day, April 20: this midnight moment’s forest

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.


These fox prints were printed by Ted Hughes in his first collection Hawk in the Rain (1957).

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

— Ellen

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