A sight for sore eyes

"Guess what"

"What?"

"I saw a fox!!"

"Are you sure it wasn't a dog?"

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Oh, what does it matter. I saw it. I did. Off Snakes Lane East, just on Glastonbury Avenue. She crossed my path or I crossed hers. But useless to talk of "mine" or "hers" since when it comes to paths there are only rights of way, sidestepping or an aporia. There she was, slinking her way through suburbia, dinking her way past the debris of human lives gone awry, past the boarded fences of the Russians, who always sat in their concrete backyard, bare-chested, drinking heavily and fondly remembering frozen homelands. And then a swift turn, a scampering back to the darkness-as if to say: I can only take so much human light. Through a hole in the fence, to the open fields. And gone.

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But that was many years ago now. Every time I pass that corner I stop in my tracks and point to that exact place. There! Her absence as strangely real as her fleeting presence. In that space I still see the contours of the fox, like the impression of a footprint in the snow reminds one of someone long after they've gone. As was shown in 'The Time Machine': even though you can't see or touch some things they're still there, it's just that they exist in another dimension-and that dimension is called time. Grown-ups have such difficulty in accepting what lies beyond their own limited vision. We die from a lack of imagination. Even though so many weird and wondrous things drift past us all the time, would we but notice them.

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Well, what do you know! There she was, after all these years, at the train station. I was going to call out to her but didn't. But she didn't even look up and probably didn't remember me. Just turned up her snooty nose and walked away with that quick pitter-patter of hers, as silently and nonchalantly as ever. Ha! Such is the way of foxes. It's in their nature...

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I stood there agape. How difficult it is to say 'we' today. But as she turned with that wonderful red coat of hers I did hear her say: "Don't you know, foxes can't be tamed!"