Leveret

by Imogen Forster

Walking up the lane I almost tread on it,
lying on one side in a patch of crusted
mud, grey, hairless. The eyes are shut,
the visible ear folded back into a pink
petal, the soft underside motionless.

The legs lie straight, feet the size of pigs’
trotters made for a dolls’ house kitchen.
I stare, sure that it’s dead. I daren’t touch,
not fearing it will be cold, but that intact,
immaculate, it may still be blood-warm.

A pinhead belly-button tells me
it breathed through this soft nostril,
sucked milk with this blunt snout.
I hear a tractor, and so that it’s not
burst open under the high roaring wheel
I shoe it into long grass, seeing it now
as itself, this hare, five inches long.