Sheila Lockhart is a retired social worker and lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands with her partner and two Icelandic horses, tending her garden and writing poetry. She has been published in Northwords Now, Nine Muses Poetry, Twelve Rivers (Suffolk Poetry Society), the StAnza Poetry Map of Scotland, The Writers’ Cafe and the Ekphrastic Review.
four hares
Carn Glas, Earth Day 2020
sapphire bright meteors
spill from the sky
pierce screwed eyes
beside the shieling
ravens flap and creak
over a dead sheep
held to this ancient circle
by gravity of stones
I contemplate funeral rites
an east wind blows
ashes scattered
over waves of stubble
*
then I spot them
black dots on periscopic ears
spines like bronze helmets
dip and rise unkiltered
through the furrows
four hares in delirium
the heart leaps
to the parabolic sweep
and speed of their chase
the sudden pause
to parry and punch
the dash of defeat
two seek refuge
in a stone dyke wall
the scent of fresh grass
while the bonded pair
flatten in a furrow
of warmed earth
Sheila Lockhart