we hear them
the foxes, their vivid orchestra, their ode to death and midnight.
Jaws upturned, throats bursting the bloody serenade
spines bowed away from the sky, and their trash-plump bellies
dragging on a ground near cracking with cold.
Still mortal, still blanketed, we talk of myths,
of the banshee my grandmother heard the night that Kieran died
It will have been a fox, you say. Surely? Hoping, perhaps.
And to hear them now, who could doubt it?
Their desperation cuts me. I cannot help but worry
not about, but for the fox, whose pitiful circumstance
has reached the point of screaming; the fox,
who I am already becoming
swaddled though I am in thick, blue cotton.
My lips roll from the gums,
the scream riots beneath my human flesh
and pale skin, peeling back, bares
crimson bloody fur, new claws to shred the thread count
and gag the squall.
Days later, still haunted, I consult my books –
What kind of pain is this? I ask. What can be done?
Only to find out it isn’t pain at all, but union.
This noise they make, thus guttural crying
is how the lovers find each other, and on that finding, sing.
And more! I tell you, that night in the sheets
they stay with each other. Together, for life.
Your eyes widen (this could be, afterall, be the scariest part).
But in our walled garden, ignorant to your trembling
the wailing duo howl their eternal, musky din.
Listen to them
what music they make.
This poem is due to appear in the inaugural issue of ‘A Field Guide to the South West: Weird Sounds’
Alice O'Malley-Woods 
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