Inside, where the light from savage amber eyes glows on dark nights.
Does your pulse still beat to the bay of blooded hounds
and the thunder of sharp hooves?
Or have you grown immune, in your city home
to the tempo of wood and ditch and bramble thicket.
Did you succumb to this of your own wild will?
Was attrition or starvation your motivation
to make this urban relocation?
Did you freely surrender nuts and berries and birds
for the detritus of a meaner human world?
are you content with scraps from restaurants skips?
And half empty tins tumbling from rubbish bins.
The din of hollow metal sheet on hard cold city concrete.,
Street lights dimming memories of moons,
among this tamed ruin of moor and wood.
Did the lure of domestication
entice a wild nation to this state of vermin’s station?
A city fox.
Boxed in to a carved and gridded wilderness
in sewer pipe burrows and scrap metal runs
hounds and guns are silent here
and skies collide with lines and line
of dark angular silhouettes.
-Dave Kavanagh
Poet's Corner 