‘City Foxes’ and ‘She Waits’ by Annest Gwilym

 


 

Annest Gwilym lives in North West Wales, near the Snowdonia National Park. Her work has been published in various literary journals and anthologies, both online and in print. She has been placed in writing competitions in recent years, winning one. She is the editor of the webzine Nine Muses Poetry. Her first pamphlet of poetry –  Surfacing – was published by Lapwing Poetry in August 2018.

 


 

 

             

             

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

City Foxes 

 

 

 

 

 

Those nights when the Eurostar

clanked and clattered past, tunnelling

through the night, setting the china

to clink and quake and the whole bed

to shake, when the only other people

awake were red-nosed drunks

and night workers in hushed streets,

 

I would look out of the bedroom window –

eyes stinging with sleeplessness,

a mouthful of gin burning on my palate,

blood stilled like wet brown leaves –

at the dull grass of the communal garden,

a spotlit stage, and wait for foxes

to arrive from nearby waste ground.

 

Liquid, acrobatic, a swirl of autumn,

with a feline leap from the fence they landed,

velvet-footed, spangle-faced, a mother

and kits who rolled and played, dived

and pounced on curls of dead leaves.

Parched and dusty border plants

seemed to lean in and applaud them.

 

Annest Gwilym

 

 

 

She Waits 

 

 

 

 

 

Amber-eyed, he runs in and out of brightness

on tip toes in the wood, follows

familiar scent trails, downy coat

the colour of rowan berries in autumn.

 

The air at dusk is heavy and cider-still:

he stops, the triangles of his face and ears

spellbound, crouches and pounces

on a mouse, shakes it until limp.

 

In nearby fields, spring lambs were lost

to fox-raids; the farmer stalks

as his gun sniffs its prey, snarls, barks:

red explodes on the fox’s white vest.

 

She waits in the den with their kits:

brown bundles with blind blue eyes,

five fluffy scraps of new life

that whine softly for food.

 

He lies fields away, fly-blown, eyes jellied

with death, sunken and ever sinking

into the ditch where his rusting,

dulling body was thrown.

 

Annest Gwilym

 

Stories

Poems