RURAL PURSUIT

Jinnie...... is that truly your name?
Are you looking for your dad?
Is that his gun case on the sideboard?
Is he shooting down the fen?

Have you watched him shoot a hare?
Pausing with his barrels poised
while the creature skirts its furrows raised
its fur hackled and its ears laid low.

And the sharp crack which broke the afternoon
and the hare's back quivering on the ground
not dead, merely wounded. Its eyes rolling,
for the shooter forgot the final shot,

left him writhing and leaping in the air
kept him covered until his mate arrived
who took a minute for that final check
and then, with slow agony, broke his neck.

Keith Thompson
6th January 2005