Fox

It was difficult to concentrate at work today. I found distraction in everything. I kept staring out of the window trying to catch the clouds changing shape, or found myself standing in the kitchen down on the first floor staring out at the long lawns at the backs of the houses across the way. Towards the back of one of them there's a moss-covered bench beneath a beautiful maple tree with big, beautifully-shaped red and gold leaves the colour of flames. The rest of the lawn has been raked, and is clear and green, but the area behind is still thickly carpeted with gold and russet leaves fallen from the taller trees at the back of the garden. I looked a few times today before I saw what else was there. Curled up, just to the left of the bench, right there in the open, almost the same colour as the leaves, was a big fox asleep in the leaves. Just curled there, happy as you like, in the middle of the day, at the back of a garden in a busy area of London. I kept going down to check throughout the afternoon, and he would be turned in different directions, but still curled up in a ball, his head tucked into his tail. It made me think of waking at night in the car, raising myself from the sleeping bag to get a sip of water or pull the layers tighter around myself and staring up out of the windscreen at the tall thin trees towering up like sticks of charcoal into the black sky, and several times seeing foxes coming back at night, trotting silently up the dark laneway, in twos or threes. Sometimes their red eyes would stare directly at me for long seconds before they disappeared off into the trees. Never seen one during the day like that though, just laying there. Almost the exact same colour as the autumn leaves.