City Fox, Country Fox Poem by C Richard Miles

The city fox envies his soft, rural kin:
They don’t have to watch out for lorries and cars.
The sleek village vixen just lazes away
In wide-open fields, underneath sparkling stars.

The city fox has to go out in the light
When rustical Reynard sleeps safe in his bed.
He only pops out in the midst of the night
To pilfer some poultry from his chickenshed.

The city fox struggles to keep himself fed;
A diet of leftovers doesn’t go far.
Whilst eking a living is all he can do,
Arcadian diets are like caviare.

The city fox scratches in bins for his food
But, out in the country, his cousin lives well
On rabbit and pheasant and other fine game
Whilst rough, tatty townie recoils from the smell.

The city fox wears his dull coat sparse and thin;
His privileged relative sports rich and red.
He sleeps in a cosy, warm, luxury earth
And not in a dingy, cramped, waterlogged bed.

The city fox hangs his tail limply and sad;
He carries an unbristled stub of a brush,
Whilst proudly his brother wags, bouffant and brash,
His tail, fully furnished with fur long and lush.

The city fox seeks for our sympathy, but
He thinks he is safer by living in town
For out in the country, they shoot and they hunt
And life can be dangerous, if you are brown.

The city fox chooses to live where he does
Away from the huntsmen so pretty in pink
As, shouting and chasing, they gallop along
With hounds in the vanguard who jostle and jink.

The city fox laughs at his lazy, fat aunts
Who, chased by the beagles, soon run out of breath
And give up the ghost and surrender at last
In terror, awaiting a violent death,

But city MPs have abolished his fun
By banishing hunting to history’s book
And so his soft sisters are safe as can be
While his life is hard; they have all the luck.