Poem of the Week

That Boxing Day morning, I would hear the familiar, far-off gowls and

                    gulders

over Keenaghan and Aughanlig

of a pack of beagles, old dogs disinclined to chase a car suddenly quite

                    unlike

themselves, pups coming helter-skelter

across the plowlands with all the chutzpah of veterans

of the trenches, their slate-grays, cinnamons, liver-browns, lemons, rusts,

                    and violets

turning and twisting, unseen, across the fields,

their gowls and gulders turning and twisting after the twists and turns

of the great hare who had just now sauntered into the yard where I stodd

                    on tiptoe

astride my new Raleigh cycle,

his demeanor somewhat louche, somewhat lackadaisical

under the circumstances, what with him standing on tiptoe

as if to mimic me, standing almost as tall as I, looking as if he might for a

                    moment put

himself in my place, thinking better of it, sloping off behind the lorry bed.