The Snow-shoe Hare
Is his own sudden blizzard.
Or he comes, limping after the snow storm,
A big, lost, left-behind snowflake
Crippled with bandages.
White, he is looking for a great whiteness
To hide in.
But the starry night is on his track.
His own dogged shadow
Panics him to right, then to left, then backwards,
Then forwards –
Till he skids skittering
Out across the blue ice, meeting the Moon.
He stretches up, craning slender
Listening
For the Fox’s icicles and the White Owl’s frore cloud.
In his popping eyes
The whole crowded heaven struggles softly.
And his nose bobs wilder
And his heart thuds harder
Tethered there, so hotly
To his crouching shadow.