Fox

I'm driving through the rain on this October night when I glimpse a movement ahead. As I slow the car to turn into my street, I'm half listening to some guitar-based dad rock while my head churns over a remark someone made at work today, when there it is in the headlights. A fox.

A fox, not a cat, is silhouetted against a garden wall ahead. It slinks in the shelter of the wall then turns to face the car. For a moment everything stops: my hands on the wheel. The music. My thoughts. Time itself. There's a moment of still. I look at the fox and the fox looks at me. Its eyes are wide open, dark, lovely and unreadable. There is no doubting its foxiness: the pricked-up ears, the whiskered snout, its gingery coat made pale by the orange streetlight glow. Fox turns tail - a proper fox-shaped bushy tail - and scarpers over the wall. Then it is gone and I am in the middle of the road, still turning, turning, turning the wheel towards home.

Afterwards my evening is not the same. I hear sirens and traffic noise outside, and imagine the fox out in the great dark.

Perhaps mysteries always lurk just behind the ordinary world. And perhaps it is not great perception but simple luck whether we chance upon a mystery, or whether we drive past, oblivious.