The Fox and I

Alone walking in the forest, snow falling thick and silent, fat flakes clinging in the stillness to every twig and bough. 

No footprints mark the path I follow, save my own since early morning, no boot or paw or hoof has passed this way. 

The trail bends and I see him, something moving in the whiteness; it’s a fox along the border of the path. 

For a heartbeat, undetected, I watch him, his head cocked, listening, focused on some tiny creature moving beneath the snow. 

A sound must have escaped me, a breath, a sigh, betrays me.  He turns his head and sees me.  His eyes meet mine. 

Snowflakes balance on his fur, in the air between us, on my eyelashes.  We are together in a snow globe, he and I. 

Surely he must know I am no threat; he’s the hunter, not the hunted.  I’m an observer only, a grateful one at that. 

He is poised, his body quivers, his attention is divided between me and the possibility of food so near.    

His hunger wins; some movement or vibration in the snow beneath him has reminded him of what he knows is there beneath the snow.

He tenses, as he listens, his eyes focused on the whiteness hiding what he cannot see but only hear beneath the snow. 

He pounces, ballet on black paws.  He has caught his prey; he eats it in one swallow.  Then he turns his head and looks again at me. 

I wonder what he senses, if he knows I wish him well.  I am spellbound, as I watch him in the thickly falling snow.

Then as silent as the snow falls, he slips into the forest in the dimness of the closing day and in seconds he is gone. 

Anonymous

Words In Motion 2014