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.