Filling the Blank Page

—Anonymous Photo

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. 


__________________________

—Medusa, celebrating that “sharp hot stink of fox”, and the poetry it brings ~

For more about Ted Hughes and “The Thought-Fox”, go to www.richardwebster.net/tedhughes.html/.

For an article about writing poetry, see interestingliterature.com/2017/02/five-of-the-best-poems-about-writing-poetry/.

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