From The Path Of the Hare.

The Hare and the Swallows.

The hare sat in the rough pasture and awaited the on-coming thunderstorm. The afternoon had gone from being chilly to very close and humid. It was the end of April and the weather had being poor. The sky gradually darkened with ominous intentions. Then came a deep grumbling from the southwest. The slight breeze had abated and all was now stillness.
The sky grumbled once more.
The hare remained unmoved. What will be will be.
The rain came fast and hard. First a few powerful heavy drops splattering on the grass, then the promised torrential downpour pounding the earth with a show of elemental power. This was a show of force; a message from nature that she was not to be messed with or taken for granted.
Soon the dark vengeful clouds passed over and the sun showed himself once more, at first fitfully, then gradually gaining confidence to shine down. On the tumbled stonewall nearby the heat quickly made the surface layer of water steam emitting an earthly smell into the air. Birds began to sing once more, first a blackbird in the hawthorn tree than a resplendent male chaffinch perched on a fence post.
Through all the turmoil the hare sat crouched like a piece of gritstone that lay strewn about the area. Now he sat up as if to greet the sun with a welcoming gesture. Then as if appearing on a beam of sunlight, a pair of swallows skimmed across the rough pasture, twittering as if with excitement. As they flew low, directly over the sitting hare, he suddenly leaped up into the air with a sinewy, sidelong twist, his legs outstretched and his long black-tipped ears tilting at an unaccustomed angle. To one watching it seemed a leap of sheer joy, a welcoming of long distance travellers back home to the pasture. The swallows continued to sweep over the field weaving their patterns through the humid air. The hare appeared to watch for a moment then he loped off through a gap in the wall and was swallowed by a thicket of brown-tipped sedge, and finally vanished, leaving the swallows to twitter and chatter and spin their tales in the spring sunlight.