Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, Henry Taylor
An old-school foxhunter let it get around
that he hunted a deer-proof pack. Hard to believe:
foxhounds are born to run foxes, all right,
but you have to make them stay off rabbits,
housecats, chickens, etc. They learn to stop
when the hound-whip cracks. Deer scent, though,
is strong enough to put whips out of their minds.
So, somebody asked, how do you do it?
Take a bag of deer scent and a hound,
put them both in a fifty-five-gallon oil drum,
and roll it down a hill or a rocky road.
God almighty. You claim this really works?
Seems to. One thing I’ll say’s for damn sure:
they stay away from fifty-five-gallon drums.
~~~
From The Flying Change, Henry Taylor, Louisiana University Press, Baton Rouge, 1985, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
In an earlier issue of Foxhunting Life, we published one other of his poems, Riding Lesson. It was brief, like this one, exuding the same dry wit.
It’s my belief that “the old-school foxhunter” that inspired this poem is the late Ben Hardaway. Ben has been credited with the same story right through to the ending, though not perhaps in Pulitzer Prize-winning language. Also, the first word after the poem’s opening sentence is “Hard.” Did the author intend that as a hint?
Posted February 22, 2022