The Hare
She settles into her depression
achieves her perfect form
in flat still camouflage
The dim farmer cannot know
how she surveys his labours
behind beaded spider webs
The fox and the hawk care not
that she has taken the earth
as her lover. She pushes against
his silence, his intransigence,
feels cold strength spreading
to the tips of her scarred ears
The sun is lost in a barley pod
but spring will come again
with its frenzy and its terror
In the grip of her loins’ madness
she will take her place in the wind
to box and bite their necks
The farmer barks something
in his tongue and she feels right
to run, springs out across the field,
quicksilver in the jelly of his eye
sinews packed with surviving fire.
She has unanswerable questions
One night she dreamed she was an owl.
Another night, she swam in warm seas.
Another still, she grew old and died.
She lives by phases of the moon.
She holds what she has close.
Everything else cannot ever matter.
Copyright © Robin Private | Year Posted 2022
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