prayer for a hare

Happy New Year dear Readers from the menagerie here.

Jackdaw has been helping out in the poly tunnel. He is very affectionate and loves to have his head stroked. He has made himself a clever entry and departure route in the shade tunnel where he sometimes lives with the crow with white feathers. I really do think that if man had wings and bore black feathers few of them would be clever enough to be crows.(or any of the corvids), He may indeed be wondering about me, though I think apart from being his saviour he may see me as a favourite aunt.

 So Geoffrey the bantam chick bought to keep the lone duckling company has lived up to his name and is not a hen after all but a cockerel. He has been practicing little doodle doos in the morning and has taken to pecking at my shoes when I put the ducks away at night. No eggs from him then.

We did all have a lovely Christmas though - especially Rocket who had his new friend Lenny the rescue greyhound round to stay. They certainly know their own tribe.

There is no love of life without despair of life purred The Ghost Pocket from behind the christmas stockings.

You know Albert Camus do you? I said. Albert was a moralist and leaned towards anarchic syndicalism. Pocket answered as he examined the contents of the stockings. 

His views contributed to the rise of philosophy known as absurdism.We share similar views. 

You've certainly met a lot of interesting people I suggest to him.

 He shut his eyes and purred. Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched. 

Cevantes? I queried. 

Indeed - he was widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. And may I suggest if you feel you have to get another cat - though of course you'd not be able to replace me - you call him Quixote. 

I was about to ask him if he understood Spanish now but he'd already disappeared with the tangerine at the bottom of the stocking.

Rocket said he was exhausted with entertaining Lenny and that he was a bit put out by the fact Lenny could run faster than him. Also that Lenny had his own Instagram site and why didn't he have one? I told him that I had once created CogsDogsBlog but that he hadn't offered up any interesting stories 

He asked if anyone knew Pocket had blinded him in one eye when he was thirteen weeks old (Rocket that is not Pocket) and I suggested he wrote about that and how amazing it was that if he only had the sight in one eye that he could see a deer on the horizon and go for it. 

 I said he could entitle it Of Course and write about how lurchers like him were used in hare coursing which has been happening up here on the farm sometimes at night by people in four wheel drives and lurchers. It's the most despicable crime - killing hares just to gamble on how many they could kill in a night. I suggested he should start wearing an eye patch incase anyone stole him to do that very heinous crime.

We found one of the long nosed dogs, thin, covered in fleas and wearing a shoelace round her neck. A neighbour took her to the vets and later the dog protection league who put her photo on their site. A man from Bournemouth (a good forty miles from here) claimed her as his, said she'd escaped from his garden and he'd only had her for four days. Not chipped of course. Someone found a photo of her with him four years previously and he was surrounded by dead hares, unintentionally laid out in the shape of a flower.

I was rather pleased to find that the most annoying phrase and saying that British Transport keep using - See it, Say it, Sorted -sounds so much more pleasing in Latin. 

Vide, Dic, Rectum.

So the sweet peas have become seedlings and are full of promise for the summer.

Prayer for a Hare

Run when you see them

the long nosed dogs

flee through the corn

and race down the tracks

rush when you hear

the barking at night

and dash when you see

the dazzling light.

Bolt from these dogs

and don't wait to fight

in this ripping pursuit

they take part in at night.

They'll chase to exhaustion

the long nosed dogs

excited by extinction

and the smell of your fear

whilst the balaclava men

will shout and cheer

and video you lying with your

ripped up fur.

Linda Coggin Jan 2006

 I also found this poem written in the 17th century by John Dryden.

Some Fearful Hare
 So I have seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tir’d before the dog she lay;
Who, stretch behind her, pants upon her plain,
Past pow’r to kill, as she to get away:
With his loll’d tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows he flix up as she lies;
She, trembling, creeps upon the ground away,
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes
 John Dryden