Poem of the Week: The Hares of Lettergesh West

For Eamon Grennan

Annie, half sleeping, asks as I climb back in bed,
Have you been up long? and I don’t know how

to answer — it feels like eons. Not wanting to wake her further,
I don’t mention the four hares I saw when I went out

to look at stars. Except for the swiveling of their long ears
they were motionless, as if enchanted by the dawn chorus,

and we formed such a strange tableau: the otherworldly
hares and me, stepped out of time, and the impossible

blackbird. At last the four philosophers loped off out of sight
to their lives as hares, and I was once more

that foolish thing, a graying man in pajamas. If only
they’d looked back. If only they’d let me know I’m real.

Theodore Deppe is the author of seven collections of poems, including The Wanderer King (Alice James), Orpheus on the Red Line (Tupelo), Liminal Blue (Arlen House) and Cape Clear: New and Selected Poems (Salmon).