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Sunday, February 02, 2020

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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