I had gone on Easter Day
early and alone to be
beyond insidious bells
(that any other Sunday
I’d not hear) up to the hills
where are winds to blow away
commination.
In the frail
first light I saw him, unreal
and sudden through lifting mist,
a fox on a barn door, nailed
like a coloured plaster Christ
in a Spanish shrine, his tail coiled around his loins.
Sideways
his head hung limply, his ears
snagged with burdock, his dry nose
plugged with black blood.
For two days
he’d held the orthodox pose.
The endemic English noise of Easter Sunday morning
was mixed with the mist swirling
and might have moved his stiff head.
Under the hill the ringing
had begun. As the sun rose red
to press on seemed the best thing.
I walked the length of the day’s
obsession.
At dusk I was
swallowed by the misted barn,
sucked by the peristalsis
of my fear that he had gone,
leaving nails for souvenirs.
But he was there still. I saw
no sign. He hung as before.
Only the wind had risen
to comb the thorns from his fur.
I left my superstition
stretched on the banging barn door.
