March Hare

Wonderful up on the moor this morning. Sun, at first a pale disc, emerging from chilly high cloud. Six lapwings whooping and dancing, one in particular puts on an amazing display of aerobatics, swooping and diving and fluttering. And a hare, big as a dog, racing away through the heather and bilberry, the white backs if its long ears disappearing over the top of the hill. Meadow pippits and grouse, jackdaws, ewes with lambs, and not one single human soul my entire hour-long walk. I love this.

I've decided to set myself a little April challenge - to post something here every day. A small stone or a larger pebble, we'll see.

A Piece of the Storm
(for Sharon Horvath)

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all
There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
'It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.'

Mark Strand