"Hare’s Lullaby"

I thought of cutting off the foot, finding the well of rusted luck hidden in the now calm sandy furrow

seven years quicker than the life of a man and amorous toward the sport.

My memory

drifts uncalled, stuck to rousing visions of pleading eyes once innocent, trained to a northern point, testing the air out of cage.

Whisker compasses, tender set to kissing fading breezes

With careful passion, barely past both our reaches

Slender lobes, lined pink, are braced to them, and we dance in their indigo wilds

as they touch down on the green

pulling our timid souls forward

in an explorer’s solid pact, like a broken arrow, strictly aimed

near open sky while paving a rough trek to find a flash of bold joy in warmer seasons, stolen.

Now free to run in the marigold reflection,

Chasing the rebel spirit

nimble, with no dates to be late for,

or prints left to trail.

Brush gives a soundless cover, but I’ll forever keep an open ear.

### Author’s Note ###

Hare’s Lullaby is from my 2014 anthology, There’s Tofu in This. It is a collection of poems that explore memory, movement, and the wild spaces—both real and imagined—that shape us.

When I wrote this piece, I was thinking about the delicate balance between instinct and freedom—how we chase something untamed within ourselves only to find it slipping through the tall grass. The hare, with its quicksilver grace, became a symbol of that restless spirit, one that yearns for open spaces yet carries the echoes of captivity.

The poem moves through memory, not as a straight line but as a flickering trail—soft, scattered, and impossible to follow back. It’s about the quiet agreement between longing and motion, the way nature teaches us to listen, to move with purpose but without a map. I wanted to capture that feeling of stolen joy, the kind we experience in rare, fleeting moments before we realize we are ever chasing it at all.

At its heart, this poem is both a lullaby and a call to run. If you connected with it, consider subscribing or leaving a tip—it helps support more work like this. Thanks for reading!