Scutter.

On a day frozen into stillness

The snow clawing at the land,

I stooped over a hare’s

Sacred, lifeless body,

The blood, dark on the ice

Like red wine,

Trickling from its nose;

Its hunted eyes –

Once so full of wisdom and mystery,

Black as moorland coal,

Gateways from the cages

Of our sanctity –

Were void of inner vision,

For its shadow -

Its spiritual being,

Now released,

Danced across the grouse moor

Free from persecution.

Its fragile body,

Displaced now in time

And relativity,

Its dreams slowly leaking into infinity,

Still felt warm to my touch

As I lifted it from the side of the road.

Inwardly I wept with despair and joy,

My voice gagged by earthen moss,

Afraid of the tangled woven threads

Of the primeval past

That passed through the land

Like sinews:

Afraid of the window on the world

Which opened up and shimmered before me,

As I felt the hare’s spirit

Pass into the earth,

Seeping like spring water

Into the crumpled green folds,

Into bones, flesh and blood.