Vixen
I wait outside my daughter’s boyfriend’s house.
Ignition off. Radio low.
I rarely feel my hackles rise
at my desk, or in Tescos, but here,
a flicker creeps into my peripheral vision –
fire on black – a comet’s trail, then
a head that oscillates; her upturned snout.
I switch the radio off. Watch from above.
She paws the tarmac, bows to me – but no,
slides her jaws around a roadkill squirrel
indistinguishable except for its compressed plume tail.
Slinks off to where the foxes go.
Sarah Wimbush comes from Doncaster and now lives in Leeds. She won the Red Shed and Mslexia Poetry Competitions 2016.