Cry For Help (Poetry)
25th July 2021
We called them to report a fox
we’d seen him for the past few mornings
sniffing round the scrubby patch of grass
where someone in our block leaves out their scraps
for birds, squirrels — any wild thing
with an appetite for pasta, toast or other
less identifiable blobs of this and that
I say ‘he’ when actually we couldn’t tell at that distance
looking down and across from our flat window
whether dog or vixen underneath his matted coat
he wore a crust of something sticking to his back
from just below his shoulders to his rump there hung
this pale covering that constant shaking couldn’t budge
his snout, too, was smeared with the same substance and
he squinted like sore eyes kept them permanently half-shut
For all that, he moved with no apparent loss of ability
still agile — trotting quick as any of his kind through the hedge
across the carpark with ears pricked alert and ready to bolt
at anything that might be a threat while he nosed around
hopeful of some breakfast — whatever the crows, magpies, pigeons
may have left
One 8 am grounds maintenance disrupted his routine — all noise
great clouds of dust and choking petrol fumes with repeated
up and down and round and round on their machines
the air a thick nerve-shredding wall of gritty sound
that even when they were done with carving lines in turf
took a while to settle — make its peace again with the nearby trees
Afterwards, we watched the gap in the laurel hedge. Kept checking
for him regularly, but saw no glimpse — neither hide nor hair of the
unlucky beast. Days passed. At last we had to let them know it was
too late for any attempt at rescue since it seemed the fox had gone
Post Script. This morning a black labrador who had escaped again
from a garden up the street, scared off a pair of crows who’d found
the latest thrown-out pie. Waste not ... he gobbled up the lot
we’d seen him for the past few mornings
sniffing round the scrubby patch of grass
where someone in our block leaves out their scraps
for birds, squirrels — any wild thing
with an appetite for pasta, toast or other
less identifiable blobs of this and that
I say ‘he’ when actually we couldn’t tell at that distance
looking down and across from our flat window
whether dog or vixen underneath his matted coat
he wore a crust of something sticking to his back
from just below his shoulders to his rump there hung
this pale covering that constant shaking couldn’t budge
his snout, too, was smeared with the same substance and
he squinted like sore eyes kept them permanently half-shut
For all that, he moved with no apparent loss of ability
still agile — trotting quick as any of his kind through the hedge
across the carpark with ears pricked alert and ready to bolt
at anything that might be a threat while he nosed around
hopeful of some breakfast — whatever the crows, magpies, pigeons
may have left
One 8 am grounds maintenance disrupted his routine — all noise
great clouds of dust and choking petrol fumes with repeated
up and down and round and round on their machines
the air a thick nerve-shredding wall of gritty sound
that even when they were done with carving lines in turf
took a while to settle — make its peace again with the nearby trees
Afterwards, we watched the gap in the laurel hedge. Kept checking
for him regularly, but saw no glimpse — neither hide nor hair of the
unlucky beast. Days passed. At last we had to let them know it was
too late for any attempt at rescue since it seemed the fox had gone
Post Script. This morning a black labrador who had escaped again
from a garden up the street, scared off a pair of crows who’d found
the latest thrown-out pie. Waste not ... he gobbled up the lot