In her poem The Fox, award winning British poet Alice Oswald makes palpable the preciousness of our co-existence with nature and the animal world.
A fox mother coming to her house at night to ask for food inspires her to investigate their animal-human communication and the shared understanding between mothers.
I’m awed by the striking images of the utterances of the body, the breath made sound and the soul made whole by recognition.
“Fox
I heard a cough
as if a thief was there
outside my sleep
a sharp intake of air
a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my house
just so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart’s thick accent
in such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man’s voice
but no name
as if to say: it’s midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf”
Alice Oswald, “Fox” from Falling Awake, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016