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Title: I Run with the Fox

Author: Mona Gould

Release Date: November 15, 2010 [eBook #34329]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I RUN WITH THE FOX***

Copyright (C) 1946 by the Estate of Mona Gould.

I Run With the Fox
By
Mona Gould

Toronto
The Macmillan Company
Of Canada Limited
1946

Copyright, Canada, 1946
by
The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited

All rights reserved - no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.

Printed in Canada by
Le Soleil Limitee, Quebec.

Frontespiece:
For "Mook"

(Lt.-Col. Howard McTavish, Royal Canadian
Engineers, killed in action, Dieppe, 1942)

In proud and loving remembrance

This was my brother
At Dieppe,
Quietly a hero
Who gave his life
Like a gift,
Withholding nothing.

His youth… his Love…
His enjoyment of being alive…
His future, like a book
With half the pages still uncut —

This was my brother
At Dieppe —
The one who built me a doll house
When I was seven,
Complete to the last small picture frame,
Nothing forgotten.

He was awfully good at fixing things,
At stepping into the breach when he was needed.

That's what he did at Dieppe;
He was needed.
And even death must have been a little shamed
At has eagerness.

Mona Gould

Acknowledgement:

Acknowledgment is made to Saturday Night, Gossip, Chatelaine, Canadian Poetry Magazine, Canadian Home Journal and The Montrealer, in whose pages many of these poems have appeared.

Contents

I Run With the Fox

Memory Sharp

Gift Shop Window

Sire

Communion

Loud Silence

He Will Not Go Unremembered

Bagpipes Skirl in Heaven

How'd Ya Do!

Big Day

Prayer, In a Hospital

So Fair a Season

Spring Comes to a Small Town

For a Brown Dog

Right out of Pickwick

Man is a Lonely One

This Bitter Brew

It Was Tall in the Forest

Child … Waiting in a Drawing Room

Stars and the Dead

The Old Lady and the Cat

This Green

Weather-Vane

Noel

Immortality

Release

I Run With the Fox

Better to be proud and hunted
Than to ride with the Pink Coats.

Better than the smell of warm blood after a quick kill, Bitter and bright the scent of hidden fern.

Though the heart fail in the panting side
And the eye be clouded with straining
after the deep copse
Still is there thrill in flight —
Soft are oak leaves under the swift feet.

Sweet are the distant notes of the hunter's horn
And the hounds' baying,
Sweet to the trembling ears of the hidden
and hunted.

I run with the fox!

Memory Sharp

It has come to this… my darling…
With the years gone over,
With the truth acknowledged
You are not coming back.

It is entering a room
Where the curtains are drawn,
Where dust lies heavy
On the table top.
Sudden — your name — scrawled in the gloom —
And the mouth gone dry,
And the heart stopped!

Gift Shop Window

Apple Annie, ancient and weather-beaten
Her amazing garments huddled about her,
Bent almost double to peer in the window —
She stood on the one foot… and then on the other
And nodded her head like a great dark crow.
Her old lips moved in some mumbo-jumbo
But what she said was her own dark secret.

The wine-glasses winked in their pewter holders,
A bewildering array of costume jewellery
Of filigreed ivory and cornflower crystal
Was spread like the spoils of a pirate frigate
For Apple Annie's remote appraisal.
Some place, far back in the mind's recess
The hunger for Beauty stirred in sleep.

A little smile, like a secret fragment
Of dimly-remembered and lost delight
Moved, like the stir of a small frail fan
On a face that was wrinkled and dim with age.
With a hesitant gesture, desire engendered,
Her old hands fluttered against the pane
Twisted and gnarled… and pitifully empty…
Fluttered … and moved … and were still again!

Sire

My mother was a lady
With hair like silk
And eyes like gentians
And a skin like milk.

But my father loved laughter
And the flowing bowl —
And his eyes were dark mischief —
"Rest his soul!"

My mother often stopped me
From having fun
With the echo of her proper
"It isn't done!"

But I'd feel my father's hand
As he'd rough my hair
Saying "black… and rebellious.
We're a bold, bad pair!"'

And now I'm woman grown
With a son - ah me!
Who am I to tell him
What the "score" should be!

Communion

The rain falls down silverly
On the dark night.
Oh, but the air is soft to touch
And your face white.

This is for remembering,
For putting away in the mind's pocket
Like a shell - or a treasured stone, found
at the beach—
This touch - this kiss - this heart turning
toward heart —
This is for remembering
When you are beyond reach.

Words, at best, are like thistledown.
Let us be quiet, then.
Give me your hand!
You are my friend, and my love till the
world ends —
You understand!

Loud Silence

This is loud silence,
This bewildering space
Untenanted by you.
It has the ugly face
Of loneliness!

Hush… foolish heart …
You have