Encounter
after reading Czeslaw Milosz Wilno
A father tells his young daughters
what a hare looks like;
and of his life– how his mother learnt
to warm the corn for the slow-laying hens in winter–
of the boy and the horse that he couldn’t lead towards the yard–
of shooting rabbits, snaring foxes– of the appearance
of a hare.
They talk of how it differs,
they will know from his description.
Is it later, when they walk
around the foreign trees,
searching for the tapping, for a piebald wing?
He’s gone of course–
one daughter reads the words in wonder,
one rounds the corner of the wood, in pain–
the hare is waiting.
Dawn Wood grew up on Omagh, Co Tyrone, and is now a university lecturer in Dundee. She has published poetry in New Writing Scotland 19 and 20, The Red Wheelbarrow and artwork in Poetry Review (Winter 2002/3).
Page(s) 50
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The