Hunters in the Snow
I am no human seeker trudging through the January snow,
no hunter’s fox slung casually over a shoulder,
no panicked rabbit running for its life, no singeing pig
to be turned on the fire, no exhausted dog
losing the scent, castigated by its master, no sainted stag,
no pious metaphor, no child’s plaything,
no trophy kill.
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Soaring far and wide above the high horizon -- we
corvid brothers live and die just as you
under the overcast sky, wintering in, shuttering down,
eyeing the heroic Alpine mountains, and the intimate play
of the earth-born young on the ice fields
of the Netherlandish lowlands
skating, curling, faltering, falling and ultimately failing,
mirroring all of creation’s creatures, capturing
the duality of our shared nature,
surviving the winter freeze --
honouring the hard-packed snow
as much as we loathe it.
