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 ploughlands with all the chutzpah of veterans
of the trenches, their slate-greys, 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 stood on tiptoe
astride my new Raleigh cycle,
his demeanour 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.
'Beagles'
Photo: Full Cry
