Song for the Hares
By:
November 30, 2020
James Parker, whose Cocky the Fox stories and poems we serialized from 2010–2011, and whose Kalevala bastardizations we published from 2016–2018, has recently returned from England bearing a gift: this poem, for HILOBROW’s readers. Enjoy!
SONG FOR THE HARES
Now I am invisible.
Now I am revealed.
Now smokes the rain again, again,
across the sideways field.
I jink and jag, I run zig-zag,
you’ll catch me when I tire,
and my swivel eye will freeze when I
with little screams expire.
Crop-circler, midfield king,
hear me sing.
The moon’s my moody lady,
I abide her whims and rages.
Her nurse I’ll be when she goes feeble
in her latter stages.
When she’s broad gold at harvest time
I’ll join her in a drink.
Fat pills I take like old Nick Drake
when she starts turning pink.
The oak in its throes
grips the earth with dinosaur toes.
The roots of the churchyard yew
run your buried body right through.
I live in my rhyme.
I get killed all the time.
I am the undead doornail
and I ride like a rocket
between the horns of the snail.
Artwork by Kristin Parker.
MORE PARKER at HILOBROW: COCKY THE FOX: a brilliant swearing-animal epic, serialized here at HILOBROW from 2010–2011 | THE KALEVALA — a Finnish epic, bastardized | THE BOURNE VARIATIONS: Poems about the Jason Bourne movies | ANGUSONICS: James and Tommy Valicenti parse Angus Young’s solos | MOULDIANA: James and Tommy Valicenti parse Bob Mould’s solos | BOLANOMICS: James traces Marc Bolan’s musical and philosophical development | WINDS OF MAGIC: A curated series reprinting James’s early- and mid-2000s writing for the Boston Globe and Boston Phoenix | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT | EVEN MORE PARKER, including doggerel; HiLo Hero items on Sid Vicious, Dez Cadena, Mervyn Peake, others; and more.