A putrescent smell

led my daughter into the garden

where her four year old plays.

A dead fox:

couched and crouching,

head on a tussock of grass

as if looking ahead.

No visible injury;

poisoned perhaps?

The jaw was eaten

and maggots festooned the tail.

Hackney council will take and dispose in an hour.

But she dug a garden grave

laid the fox as a foetus

beneath a blanket of earth

with stones above

to prevent further violation.