Hare-heart ~ a Poem for Spring Equinox

'Beneath Her Robes' by Kay Leverton. Find her at https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KayLeverton

How bitter sweet the snowdrops' lucent leaving

Frosted flames returning to the earth

To be held in hope as winter's cherished children

Gathered in darkling dreaming round the old year's embered hearth

As jackdaw comes with ice blue eye and silver gleaming

In winter-winged devotion to spring's rebirth

In untamed form, Melangell drums our aching

Wild lands prayer made woman, sanctified by honey and by hare

Her chapel is our ground of adoration

Our suckling hopes protected by the tresses of her hair

As her fleet-foot lambs spin the triskele to waking

And hill and valley echo to her prayer

Hare-hearted woman, devoted and defiant

One unto herself, though chased and run to ground

No hunt can halt the wildfire of the springtime

No snare bind up the sweetness where her rebel grace is found

And the outcast soul finds sanctuary in her silence

The hallowed place with which her spirit's wound

How bitter sweet the snowdrop's lucent leaving

We might close our eyes and miss their transient sea

But the seductive spell of winter's ours for breaking

Swept on a warming tide of celandine and bee

And Melangell has no time to mourn the snowdrops

Her wish, her spell, her prayer, to set us free.

(Jacqueline Durban, Spring Equinox, 20^th March 2017)

Kay Leverton ~ find her at https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KayLeverton

'Safe in Her Arms' by Kay Leverton ~ find her at https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KayLeverton

All images used with permission by the artist. Thank you so much to Kay!