Poetry |

“The White Hare”

The White Hare

 

 

You saw it first in a dream:

the white hare bounding over

tufted knolls, the sun arcing

toward sable twilight,

 

and knew then the net it wove,

this vision, this animal

self loosed in the world, lifting

you out of your hours

 

but onto what, exactly?

Migration’s instinctual:

the destination’s unknown,

so start where you stand.

 

As the lonesome pilgrim said,

The wind that shakes the barley

is the wind that blows through me.

Put another way,

 

we belong to firmament.

We ache to feel, and feeling,

ache. Trapped, the mind obeys its

design: it scatters.

 

To look for the locket is

of no use. It will be found

between rocks in your backyard

years after you’re gone.

Contributor
Gabriel Dunsmith

Gabriel Dunsmith’s poems were recently published in Poetry (July/August 2022) and have appeared in Kakalak and elsewhere. A graduate of Vassar College, he grew up in Southern Appalachia and lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.

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