Three Hares

In the still, blue snow the hare’s eye is steady as God’s,
and dark. His veined ear is unbearably tuned
to the before-dawn anticipation of sound,
and the hermitage’s silence, its one light burning.
Stripped trees, like breathless lungs; the cold smell of nothing—
and then! from nowhere, two more motionless hares,
completing the steady gaze of a Trinity. Their fur
is white now, changed, as though this freeze brought on
the purest grief and they yielded to its will with agility.
Their pricked ears are not shells shaped for noise, but bodies
offered up to the moment: sensitive, secret and stung.
We pray our souls are so Christ-like: nakedly attending;
and, in every small expanse of ourselves, may we absorb,
as these hares do the morning,  the great breath of the Word.

– On the consecration of the chapel of the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs, 21st November 2017

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