Poetry
The Fox and the Ocelot
a verse fable in one act
by Maureen Holm
Narrator: Once upon a time,
in the province of Blue,
a fox who would be silver
and an ocelot who would be grey,
passed a snowy winter season
huddled sound asleep
in the dry, cozy hollow
of a wise, old tree.
The space of a blizzard
gives ample room for dreams,
shared quietly like breathing
between a drowsy pair,
who whisper in the waking pauses,
mouth to ear and paw to fur,
arousing brief but earnest promise,
like a soft Spring rain.
After the thaw of ice and snow,
a gnawing hunger drove them out,
the fox emerging first,
to set expertly about the capture
of field mice and rabbits,
while the ocelot sat and watched,
(dreamed and dawdled, dawdled and dreamed),
then devoured the tiny bounty,
greedily, in two's and three's.
Fox (smiling, indulgent): Soon it will take many more.
Narrator: No idea of what she meant,
he bent and drew the killing remnants,
bits of forest leaf and twig,
from her slender, wriggling feet.
Fox (Has him stand): Hark now, gentle friend:
Someday soon you will outgrow
the hollow of this tree,
for it is your lot
to profit from weakness
and to inflict injury.
Mark that it is mine as well
to lie in wait for frailty
and to outwit speed and strength.
But, unlike me, you are intended
to overpower your enemies
and overtake your prey,
to sleep, not in the hollows,
but the embrace of trees, to be
fanged and clawed and fleet enough by Autumn
to snatch an eagle
from the lofting wind.
Ocelot (abashed): I am not, surely, all you say,
am undeserving of such praise.
Though it be in truth too late
for me to change my spots,
(firm) yet do I despise this golden hide,
and as you would be silver,
I would fain be grey,
thereby the better to compromise my fate.
Fox: Oh, no, 'tis I who do unworthily complain
of the red I scorn as commonplace.
For a silver coat would serve no end
but to ornament my vanity.
I warrant you shall learn of me
to prey upon the summer interlude.
Ocelot: I shall, I do.
And keener still to know
why I'm so oddly moved
when you smile and curl your silken plume.
*
Narrator: Among the fuchsia trusses
of dawning rhododendron,
the swoon of midday firs,
the tootled dusk of whippoorwills,
and the monarch's florabunda hush,
she demonstrated her unhurried skill.
Fox: Fleeter prey I take by ambush,
foraged rewards by plunder.
I take no pride in doggéd pursuit,
no pleasure in a frenzied kill.
Life spills sweetest leisurely
on the tip of my predator tongue.
Narrator: Together, they waylaid rabbits,
looted the stash of squirrels,
robbed the provident, duped the rest,
and grew sleek on cunning and theft.
Patience came hard, but laughter
as naturally as climbing.
She let him fetch down luxuries
beyond her highest bound,
then taught him to suck the fetal savor
from the uncracked shells of starlings. . . .
From the night he brought her the fabled grapes,
he lay wound in her silken scarf.
*
Narrator: Autumn signaled its beginning
with tinted leaf and oblique ray,
the hardened cool of shooting stars,
swaths of purple phlox and goldenrod
amassed at twilight in dappled clearings
among the tufts of unscythed grass,
as camouflage for families
of browsing, lilac deer.
Ocelot (awestruck): Oh, what singular creatures can these be,
borne upon so tender limb,
who walk not on the earth, but floating,
graze upon its strands of faded green?
Fox: Soft. Watch them close, the game,
which you so fleet now nearly grown,
shall finally stalk and feed upon:
the favored meat of your maturity.
Ocelot (aghast): Oh, no, not mine, not me!
'Tis a thing too lovely to be slain
to satisfy a mundane need like hunger.
Fox: No predator concedes advantage to his prey!
Ocelot (tearful): Then, in truth, I am unworthy of the name.
For, what disadvantage beauty of the flesh,
if once beheld, it dies to be possessed?
Fox (perplexed): Did I not promise in this summer interlude
to acquaint you with my skill, and thus,
prepare you for your final challenge?
Now having taught you stealth and guile,
I train your eye upon the proper target
for destruction by your fang and claw,
arrive to see you hunt not as a fox,
but as the ocelot you are, and you refuse?
Ocelot (pleading): Or merely seem to be. For in faith,
if killing be such necessary evil,
but for the beauty of these fragile few
-- and of you -- I am lost.
Fox: (harsh, but struggling) Then I leave you to your scruple
and resume the hollow you have now outgrown.
(Ocelot exits)
Narrator: She went home and wept into her silken plume.
*
September passed and then October,
shortened days without enough to eat,
extended nights with all-consuming thoughts
of her companion, now become,
a scavenger among the empty canyons,
stopping only to admire
the spiraling ascent
of eagles lofted by the wind.
Come the thin half of November,
as she lay pining in her cell,
will and silken splendor much diminished,
he came for her,
with wordless soft persuasion,
hawk eggs and owlets and whortleberries,
the fairytale grapes of famine season,
and led her to his mountain cave.
Deep in the night,
she stirred and moaned,
and he awake beside,
begged her, mouth to ear and paw to fur,
to confess her consternation.
Fox: 'Twas as though I teetered on a windy crag,
clinging fast to twigs of brittle disbelief,
yet awed by the heady certainty
that the very next breath
which I should draw would snap
and blast me from its wearied safety.
(tremulous) Oh, never before came I so close
to the edge of reckless exhaustion!
Ocelot (knowing): Then stay with me and let us sleep,
with much incautious dreaming.
Narrator: Together they rose to the reckless edge
and slept moments later in the valley.
Through the night he kept her close,
but come the dawn, he ventured forth
just long enough to hunt a tender morsel.
And she awoke alone, instantly aware
that the empty cave had dampened
and taken on a gaping volume,
a massive shape of black,
exceeded only by the mammoth odor
of overwhelming bear!
Bear: How now unlucky trespasser,
who intrudes (traps her tail) upon my winter habitat.
Speak, Fox, or breathe your last!
Fox: Oh, what lonely refuge a former truth
that an autumn passed in solitude
can vacate and disprove.
Bear: Fie! Ill-reputed to be sly!
Be done dispensing riddles with a haughty grin
and convince me quickly why I do not kill you,
as soon as listen to your sophistry.
Fox (feigns deference): My lip is parted and aching dry
as revulsion's adulating tribute,
such rank respect do you, Sir Brute, compel
by outlandish size and scent,
moreover by the hugeness of your foot,
which lies so artful bruising on my tail,
but removed could free me to some servitude.
Bear (smug): To what humiliating end do I enslave you then?
(Releases her.)
Fox: Why, to add some tasty morsels to your diet.
Bear (scoffs): Hah! A feeble argument and faint incentive
to trade your life for rodent entrail.
Fox: Do you discount before you try it
a repast of dainty mouse or rabbit,
devoured as you sprawl about
the fetid squalor of your cave?
Bear: But twenty by the hour
would hardly be enough and hard-procured,
with winter proximate and hence my nap.
This late, they would be sinewy and tough,
thus a pittance quite unworthy
of the interruption as I hibernate.
Fox: But if awakened and you need to stave
some ursine gluttony however minorly remitted?
Bear: 'Tis not in the nature of my long repose
that I should prematurely stir.
Fox: And thus the likelier to occur,
unless you post a constant sentry
at the entrance to your noxious grotto,
(attempts to slip past him, but he blocks her exit)
to discourage birds that would disturb
your bloated sloth so well-deserved
at a Summer's end spent typically revolting
most other beasts and fowl
in our nostrilly afflicted province.
Bear: No, Fox, I must insist:
all other beasts, if I may gloat.
Fox: Oh, Bear, it shall be far from me
to doubt the valorous authority
of your unfailing flatulence.
Bear: Nor I your cunning flattery. Yet, withal
I do suspect you are too small of stature
and too slight of fighting skill
to see, much less to capture,
the odd adventurer on my hill.
Fox: Agreed. 'Tis an argument I must concede
to the ferocity of your stench,
meaning to ascend the leafless tree
that stands just next your entrance,
the better to detect (attempting to exit gradually)
and rid you of the twitter
that else by useless nesting
would importune your reeking rest.
Bear (retraps her tail): Too clever, Fox!
Think you then that I know not
your woeful kind all lack the claws
to make an enterprise of climbing trees?
Though mine can make fast work of you.
Fox (arch): I duly note the hirsute length and gnarl
of two at the extreme end of my person.
Bear (fierce): The better to take the rending measure (stomps)
of all ten around your throat! (towers over her)
Fox (timid): Wait! A minority among my species
are rich-bestowed with silver coats,
which, while truly fine as ornament,
preclude the owner from ascending trees,
whereas we more agile because less vain,
but inelegantly russet, have much facility
for which we are content. (regaining confidence)
What's more, my showy plume
could lend itself as warning banner,
unfurled to great advantage
to dissuade unwanted elements,
were it not at present trammeled
by a churl's too weighty paw.
Bear: You lie! If vanity made for discontent,
why then my cousin,
being like too rich-bestowed in white,
should hate to gorge on fish in polar oceans
as much as I to ford an icy stream
and swat at bounding salmon,
(swats over her head as she cowers)
too oft with mean result.
Fox: Aha! But has he a tree to clamber up,
much less to rub against?
Bear: Agreed. I must not be incontinent.
Fox: No, please! Least not while yet a burden
on my disheveled flag! (Distracted, he releases her.)
Bear: But if no tree, then logically no bird
to perturb him while he sleeps,
and thus is he more fortunate indeed than I,
who perceive the slightest stirring.
(Ocelot growls low, perched in tree outside.)
What noise?
Fox: Perhaps a rustled leaf
on yonder peeling birch.
Bear: The same which late you misdescribed
as 'leafless'?
Fox: By a figure of speech.
Bear: What species then of squawking pest,
for hawk and eagle do I so abhor
that I would separate them wing from wing.
Fox: Perhaps not squawk but growl.
Bear (Snatches her tail.): A growling fowl?
Fox: You misheard the bird, for I said . . . 'owl',
having caught a shadowed glimpse
of spotted black on golden hide,
or no that would be wing,
which would of course be feather.
But, Sir! If now you turn to look,
you sever utterly my quill,
which you will need to use as banner
and I in altogether subtler manner.
Bear (Distracted, releases her):
Cannot be an owl in fact,
if not leopard-spotted,
and an able predator in flight,
(gentle) so soft of feather
it makes no sound whatever
swooping to attack.
Fox: Be proud, Bear, to be not duped.
Withal, this is no ordinary spotted owl.
(Aside) Nor ordinary leopard either on the prowl.
Bear: Which because it preys by night
must sleep by day.
Fox: Right you say!
Thus, if it be an owl and cannot sleep,
what meager hospice this accursèd tree,
which, worse, but for employing my facility,
you would have to climb and occupy yourself.
Bear (Pauses): Oh! What dilemma, logically,
wherein I need your help!
Fox (laughs): Now how shrewdly you conclude,
and so astutely have you just removed
the former imposition on my flagging plume,
that I bid you, Brute, adieu!
*
Narrator: In a swirl of red, she fled the cave,
but the blackness, dazed and baffled,
caught no glimpse of the spotted gold,
poised and pitiless in the desperate birch,
alert to his fox's every word,
dreading her sudden sigh,
and rehearsing the ambush of giant bear
by ocelot courage and love.
Baying trombone of frustrated brawn,
the Grendel lurched from his hideaway,
oak-snapping jaws in a rabid froth
of murderous, headlong pursuit.
But the cat,
trained on the target of talon and fang,
launched from his blistering roof
and hit home like the bullet of slingshot faith
that put out Goliath's eyes.
Tooth to scalp and claw to gullet,
Ocelot clung to Bear,
a contorted flurry of heave and swipe
and bleeding from ravaged fur,
whirling about in a snarled circle
of red-ribboned black and black-dotted gold;
blood being offered, blood was lost,
as the fox stood by and watched.
Talons embedded in jowl and snout,
Bear thrust up his batttered head
and reared like an untamed horse,
arching to fall over backwards and crush
the cathawk strapped to his withers,
that sprang free with a final joust,
as Bear collapsed in a bloody heap,
clutching his missing right eye.
(Exit Bear, yowling.)
Fox (triumphant): Be gone and so good riddance!
Oh, just listen to him caterwaul,
outsmarted and outmauled,
retreating down the hill!
(Rejoins Ocelot downstage center.)
No doubt he will not soon forget
the lessons of this duel.
Ocelot (somber): Nor we. Nor we.
His hollow eye,
and now its lonely mate,
will be reminders to us all
of the solitary habitats
a fatted season squanders,
the passionate alliances
a famine season feeds,
and the overclose allegiance borne
by want to savagery.
(brightens) Still, a half-blind bear is not half-seeing,
who should he find no lair tonight,
can openly sleep well and unmolested.
(playful) Not so a would-be silver fox
with scant facility for climbing vines,
but an evil craving for the grape.
Fox: Ah, 'tis not so much the luxury I long for
as 'tis the wanton fable.
(They clasp hands, then entwine and exit slowly
as Narrator concludes.)
Narrator: It became a tale he oft recounted
in the safety of their cave,
whispered mouth to ear and paw to fur,
and they lived happily ever after.
©1994, 1996 Maureen Holm
All Rights Reserved
Image: Foxes (Franz Marc)