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.

Glassy mountains, breathless, brittle forests

Are frosty aerials

Balanced in his ears.

And his nose bobs wilder

And his heart thuds harder

Tethered there, so hotly

To his crouching shadow.