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A Fox on Princes Street
A fox on the street
What did I see?
Tail, tipped with white, whipping in and out of sight
Flashing like a red neon sign
It’s running, running, running for its life
An explosion of exotic flowers
Red green and blue tulips against an expansive black field
Petals whizzing across like comets
A comet, a bright blinding white comet; can I jump on it?
Is much closer now
Black marks under orange eyes
Like a man in an African tribe
Bounding forwards muscularly
Eyes staring intently ahead
People in suits point at it and splutter, astonished
I see one man choke on his cigarette smoke
Streetlight hits the fox like an amber spotlight
And it stops dead
Sniffing the air with its black wet nose twitching
Its triangular ears, like hairy traffic cones, rotating
Black silhouetted buildings in an even blacker city
Like an old, worn gothic painting.
Princes Street winds through the city centre
A boa constrictor, squeezing cars and buses
And bicycles and people down its gullet
To see the imperial spike of the Castle on the bleak hills
Or catch the whiff of petrol, drink and smoke
Or hear the whining of music
Bagpipes and traffic blaring discordantly out as if through a loudspeaker
Instead, all you can smell is the insides of a digesting snake
All you can see and feel is the dark
Washing over you like a fountain of ink, liquid smoke
Camouflaging you, you blend into the city, another chimneysweep
Sticking out like a caveman in the Houses of Parliament
The men in suits holler and shout – what about?
And the caveman simply sits their serene, bemused
His straggly hair and beard like the branches of a tree
He dresses in brown leathery bark
His face like a child, confused at the men in suits’ rage
Yet it is he who is under house arrest
One man moves to catch the fox
The back of his coat flaps like a wing
As he lunges for the fox across the road
A car hits the fox
Driving on like a snowplough
The little red beast flies into the air
Suspended limp and dead, crucified tonight
How many African tribesmen might have the same fate at our hands?
What did I see?
A lifeless piece of carcass in a pool of its own blood
There’s no spotlight now
The business folks scratch their neck, they feel a little awkward
The blame the one who chased the fox – “Look what you did!”
Orange eyes closed, now just black holes
Nose no longer twitching
Ears no longer rotating
For a reason I would rather not contemplate
How long until I am splayed out on Princes Street
Surrounded by those with pitchforks and torches?
The emissaries of the snake
Though there is no festivity
Upwards they go, spinning, free
Oh, how I wish they were me
