The Thought-Fox – Veronica Aaronson

The Thought-Fox
(after Ted Hughes)

A man’s imaginings
Call to me from midnight’s
Starless black. I stir,
Bring myself together,

Flesh out my bones
With muscle and fur.  I arise,
Take in air through nostrils.
Lift my head, mouth ajar.

My eyes jerk from
this to that, that,
Then that.  I nose leaf,
Loam through snow.

The virgin white invites me
From the shadows
Towards open ground.
Man’s fingers are poised.

A clock stutters its
Tock, tick, tock, tick.
I pause, sniff wind,
Walk into the clearing,

Place paws deliberately,
Leave a smattering
Of prints across white.
My image is captured.

 

Veronica Aaronson’s first collection Nothing About the Birds Is Ordinary This Morning (2018 Indigo Dreams) was put forward for the 2020 Laurel Prize.  One of the poems from the collection was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems Anthology 2019.  Emily’s Mothers was published by Dempsey and Windle in November 2020. One of these poems was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Individual poem in 2019.