Jim, James, David, Glenn, and Phil
Many thanks for your thoughts on this.
Jim
I'm pleased you like it, and thanks for the catch on the typo.
James
I think you're right that the relevance of the fox is unclear. And also that in the context of related poems, the significance of the fox to the N would be clearer. I hadn't really thought about that. It's useful to have that pointed out.
On the question "What fungus?", I'd hoped to imply that N had encountered it while crawling around in the woods, and so ultimately it was a consequence of his wanting to become a fox. Was that unclear? Or maybe you are asking a different question?
On that note, I had considered changing S1L5 to "Tasting the crunch of dead leaves", originally just because it added another sense modality to the poem, which is mostly visual, but now I'm wondering if that would also help to suggest how he'd come into contact, been infected.
I think you're right that S3L4-6, they could be stronger. I wonder if I could even just cut them. Maybe "I had become a song" is better without elaboration, though I'm a little averse to being left with a six-line stanza. I'll definitely be giving some thought to alternatives.
Glenn,
Ah, I remember that series, I watched some of it. I'd forgotten about the role of ants, though. I'm a fan of the zombie apocalypse oeuvre, though I wasn't thinking of it here.
My understanding is that while red foxes can't climb a vertical tree trunk like a grey fox can, they can climb up a sloped branch, move from one branch to branch, and they can jump up onto a low branch (they can jump pretty high). So if a tree is accessible in this way they can climb it, which I guess fits with the line about climbing "only those trees that would have me" -- though I won't pretend that's what I was thinking of when I wrote it! I've never personally seen a red fox in a tree, though I've seen them on garage roofs, for example, and you can
find photos of red foxes in trees on the internet, and I reckon they can't all be photoshopped.
David,
That's an interesting suggestion, though I'm not really sure how the poem would work without the fox. Though, I can see that, as James suggests, the fox's significance to the N would be clearer if read in the context of related poems.
Phil
I went for "saga" because they are very long and interwoven, which seemed to fit better with underground mycorrhizal networks, the "branching chains". I don't know that "folktale" fits that. I guess I went for "woods" because I was imagining a particular place when I wrote it, something smaller than a forest. I'll think about increasing the consonance. I wonder if "forest" would overload it, though. As well as placing the N in the countryside, which I'm not sure I want.
Thanks again everyone,
Matt