The Message

In the gutter, the dead fox

remembers grey light through the slatted shed

in the early morning, smell

of dead leaves, chicken bones, nettles.

He lies on his side, very neatly, facing west,

his fur all the colours of seasoned wood,

shadow along his back where the car hit him.

He feels himself stream through a garden fence

into a sunlit bed of yellow poppies

 

although he's dead. Soon someone will come

from the nearest house, with a shovel. While he can

he pulses out a message to the children

on their way to reception class.

They stop and listen.

 

Millicent

 

think of a woman in a locked back ward

no longer young her hair

cut with blunt scissors brown    in need of washing

body in need of washing    smell of old

impatient recurring dreams    old sweat and sleep

in worn-soft calico    too-large uniform

 

sometimes she works in the laundry    folding linen

to smaller and smaller squares

sometimes    sews

 

carefully presses the needle into the rough

skin of her thumb    watches

the red abundance    spread on the flannel nightgown

her truest blood

dried deep in her body  given up

 

her name is Legion

Smith or Matcham    Fleming Littlewood Pilgrim

her father's name    or her husband's was there once

a father a husband

she can't quite remember

 

chooses not to remember    if anyone

gave her a name

Mary Millicent Mildred    she preserves it

wrapped in a handkerchief in her bedside locker

if anyone goes too near   she punches them

 

in any case

Mildred Millicent Mary  she may have chosen

her name last night in bed

touching herself

where no-one has touched her    in millennia

 

Millicent   innocent   sweetest  girl   lie  here