A FOX THOUGHT

1.

Accidentally on-purpose poetry.

I have written of this moment by

The half door dozens of times.

I know I will never get to the point

 Without emotional engineering.

 

I know my mind is broken but I

Am compelled to get to that magic

Moment, spiritus mundi as W.B.

Yeats wrote.

 

My Da went on the run bailed out-

one of the longest detainees in Ireland,

nine months. My mum said I was a wild

child would die on these streets she knew

me like no other, she saved my life.

 

Watching nature like never before.

Born and brought up in an inner city 

London-Belfast. A red glow dawning

a fox skulked out of Kavanagh's ditch.

 

A cottage in Hackballscross two rooms

without light, running water or electricity

but it changed my mindset. I stood there

at a magic dawn and watched a fox glare

back into me.

 

Dream like I stood at the half door

and realized that not the whole world

was not at war. A republican child who knew

nothing but war.

 

 It stood and walked on like the fox

in Ted Hughes poem the thought fox.

A Fox looking at a fox like a mirror image

of my inner being my heart raced.

 

 

That fox gave me something I couldn’t see

A wonder of beauty in a red glowing ditch

The cottage became my freedom winds.

A fox appearing in my poe-art like a shamanic

seal of wonder for a pagan poet.

 

When my father died I learned the cottage

was owned by the I.R.A. to run guns across

the border, he couldn’t look me in the eye.

We loved to hate each other, hardly ever spoke.

 

Mucker the townland of Patrick Kavanagh

was just a stone’s throw away.