Peter's Pancake Poetry Bus!

Yes, Peter Goulding was at the wheel this week, and you could paean a pancake, disclose drunkness (not the best idea on my part: when I was bad, I was very, very bad) or write a rondeau. Full details, and all the riders, here: http://stammeringpoet.blogspot.com/2011/03/emptiest-poetry-bus-in-history-is.html

Now, even though I'm running late and even though I don't usually preface my Poetry Bus poems with a narrative, this week one is required.

Yesterday, having got the children to school (a day's work already) I then drove to Ayr (50 miles, slow roads) to deliver a course on pain management to 12 people. Following that I had to battle my way through rush-hour traffic to Glasgow (30 miles) and find a parking space in order to attend a 2-hour seminar on Derek Walcott's The Arkansas Testament. As said seminar was being led by Professor Michael Schmidt (Carcanet Press, PN Review and head of the Creative Writing Department) one feels obliged to engage, if you know what I mean. After this (and still not having had time to eat) I was left with the 70 mile journey home, and only egg and chips at Bothwell Services to look forward to. Which I happily demolished at 8.30pm (cooked to order).

The last part of my journey home takes me off of the motorway and onto the Dalveen Pass, which is, as the name suggests, a pass that takes you through the Lowther Hills, from the heights of Lanarkshire to the depths of Dumfries and Galloway. There's some pictures here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowther_Hills

It's a dark road, and you rarely meet another vehicle, day or night.

Then, halfway along, I was abruptly stopped by a sign and wonder. A pure white hare had run in front of the car. I stopped in time, the hare sat and looked at me, and the longer I looked at it the less it became a magical creature and the more it became just what it was, an utterly wild animal. It was rangy, with a rather ugly face, and once it decided to amble off its gait was shambolic, as those long back legs were evolved for extreme speed, not walking.

Just twenty minutes from home, I burst in the door to regale my husband with the tale of the albino hare. He and Mr Google then educated me: I had seen a Mountain Hare, in winter pelage. Pelage! What a word.

Anyway, as neither the hare nor I were drunk or eating pancakes, the rondeau it had to be.

The Ghost Hare

One clear, cold night the ghost hare came,
His wildness caught my blood to flame
Consuming that considered I;
Ash-me was left to the lay-by
As ghost hare, night shining, became

Vital challenge to tarmac shame.
Here all is cover, number, name
And all, now moon lit, man made lie
One clear, cold night.

No one thing is ever the same
As another, life is not tame
And man must let wild spirit fly
If man would live before he die
One clear, cold night.