Dawn Fox

In the second stanza "the docks" are weeds not places where one unloads ships.

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(5.00 am, 20 August 2013)

   Woken in pre-dawn gloom

   When gut uncertainties
   Harry the dusk-dark room,  
   A fox shrieked like disease;
My dulled bones stirred and shrank awry
From that cold anthem of a cry.  

   Though August heats were over

   This was my year’s first fox;
   Why had it broken cover
   Screaming beside the docks?   
Joy it had slaughtered for its fill
Or anger it had missed a kill?

   Worse, was its scream a warning –

   That stink and yellow jaw! –
   Fraught in the silent morning
   As the squealing of a door?
Was it for the past a reckoning,
And to some beyond a beckoning?    

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© August 2013