There is no Reynard fox. Just foxes.
I’m the fox who scents this pole.
As a kit on gravel, I brow-arched Play? to a human.
It grabbed to kill, and gave me a soul.
We’re trotting down one hen-stalk gully.
Soul can sit up inside, and be.
I halt, to keep us alive. Soul basks in
scents of shadow, sound of honey.
Call me the lover in the dew
of one in his merriment of blur.
Fragile as the first points of a scent
on the mind’s skin settle his weights of fur.
A light not of the sky attends
his progress down the unleaped dim—
There’s a young false-hoofed dog human coming
and the circling gunshot scent of him
eddies like sickness. I freeze, since their
ears point them, quicker than a wagtail’s beak.
I must be Not for a while, repressing
all but the low drum of the meek.
Dreams like a whistle crack the spring,
a scentless shape I have not been
threads the tall legs of deities
like Hand, and Colour, and Machine.
—Les Murray, “The Gods”
Photography Credit Tina Modotti