Alexandra Huỳnh, Carmichael, CA
National Youth Poet Laureate
THE THOUGHT FOX
—Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
___________________
Congratulations to Alexandra Huỳnh, 18, a Stanford University student from Sacramento, who has become the new National Youth Poet Laureate! See apnews.com/article/arts-and-entertainment-57083fa330442af75840bb68fbf709fd for more info.
—Medusa
—Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
___________________
Congratulations to Alexandra Huỳnh, 18, a Stanford University student from Sacramento, who has become the new National Youth Poet Laureate! See apnews.com/article/arts-and-entertainment-57083fa330442af75840bb68fbf709fd for more info.
—Medusa
