‘First catch your hare…’
those inevitable jokes about jugging,
about the long slow cooking required,
as I cradled him in that Laithwaite’s box,
carried him home with wrap of bubble
and shredded paper for his bedding;

some debate about full moon,
about which night it fell on,
felt it had to be later than the Thursday,
weren’t surprised when lunacy
snared us at a craft fair;

bought a hare, a wide-eyed, startled specimen
trapped in mid-flight,
not a moon-gazing, other-worldly hare,
not a groomed, tamed, symbolic hare,
but a running one,
ungainly, windruffled.

Cast bronze, which we didn’t grasp till googling after,
but what he was made of didn’t matter,
nor the fact that he was a second,
a flawed hare we’d maybe rescued from the flame,
for this was not
a rational purchase;

just something about the texture
of his coat, his lopsided gait, huge feet, huge ears,
something hugely appealing;
also the magic thing…The only live hare we’d seen before
had led us down to the beach at Mwnt
that day, probably full moon,
we decided to come back here.