Death of a Fox

Winner of the 2023 Maine Postmark Poetry Contest, held in conjunction with the Belfast Poetry Festival.
 

          I always knew it would end like this:

          a cold night, around the end of March,

          when I snowshoe out to a woodshed

          and reach for some last pieces of dry oak,

          embers of sunset already turning ashy,

 

          and you rise from a bed of torn hay bale,

          blinking, for I’ve disturbed your sleep,

          dead weeds tangled in your auburn hair,

          staring at me through rheumy black eyes,

          your biting criticism finally failing you;

 

          in old England they would have hounded you

          for your beauty and purity of white breast,

          but here in New England you bounded

          over stone walls in your own steeplechase,

          kits running around as you played vixen,

 

          so I retreated from the outbuilding silently,

          shivering woodless through a subzero night

          as ice clinked in rivers flowing like cocktails,

          and in the morning you were for the ages,

          tail swept over your face like a fur collar.