It was hare who did it, twisted my inner logic. I had to reconsider the pantheon - cow parsley waving from the April hedge chervil gesticulating her witchery litany, the ancestors calling out, again We’re Still Here inviting, chiding us to pay our respects as once all the others did. Opening the door, flies suss the car, apparently I’m their target. We were beside the River Valley Walk undulating down to the tranquil Little Dart, hare arriving with sideways skips, lollops into, then over the verge a-zigzagging here and there over the over-there criss-cross field, then, pausing on hedge’s crest gazing intently north she steadily surveys the treasure map, half-tamed, her universe. Goldeneye of Masquerade on mission, or one of the mysterious triad, hare’s turning, spinning in her spiralling gyre – she’s watching for her young, half- buried in the fold in the next field, you say but I know where she goes I am to follow – tunnel through the secrets brushing the long reed-grass, shuffle into wheat’s hidden kernel where the reapers swipe their glinting scythes. There’s transformation in the sunlit field sent by those marking the elongating midday shadows who gifted these finches to sing - where she goes I know I am to follow – walking sideways, always after out of sync. Note: Hare appeared by our car just south of Affeton castle West Worlington, in Devon
Julie Sampson’s poetry is widely published. She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, 2009 (Shearsman Books); her collectionsare Tessitura(Shearsman Books, 2014) and It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey & Windle, 2018 ). She received an ‘honourable mention’ in the Survision James Tate Memorial Prize, in 2021. Her main website is at JulieSampson.
Amethyst Review 