Hares
It's curiously isolated. About 5 acres of unused land between the highway, the railway and some factories. It's overgrown in winter and in late spring someone mows it down leaving a thick cover of mulch.
I take a bus there some mornings, to avoid going all the way into the city and then coming back to the factory which is our client. And cut across from the road. One morning a cat sat under the bushes by the drain and coldly escorted me across the paddock with its eyes.
I watch for the hares. Big hares hide out in the grass and bound off into the bushes when I get too close. Usually I don't see them until they break away, but sometimes I spot them sitting up watching and listening.
A couple of evenings recently I've left early enough to walk back to the highway in the half dark and catch a bus- the buses don't stop there later in the evening.
This evening I was looking for the hares, and saw none. I imagined them licking the morning dew from the grass... my shoes are getting wet these days, and wondered idly what they do for the rest of the day. Hares sitting under the shade of the shrubbery with 60,000 cars roaring past 20 yards away. What would a hare do....
and I felt the fur of a hare and its breathing pulsing body
there was no doubt and I knew
the reality of God and the wonder of the universe
and it was a different person who leaned against the bus stop into the night as the traffic raced past
for a few seconds
I knew.
April 24 2002
