DAME GARSON, THE HARE OF ASHDOWN FOREST

By Di Hills

Dame Garson, famed

on a forest of wounds and fevers

for turning herself into a runaway hare,

blink twice and she’d evaporate into thin air

she was all lightning speed

in a slow as a snail world.

Dame Garson lived

in a cottage made of mens’ bones,

for forest men shrank from the house of God,

refused to obey lords laws

poached, fished, scavenged,

and died unshriven under dead bracken.

On mad horses of steel,

hunters tore over the forest,

razor sharp gorse crumpled to dust,

chased the hare,

close ally of fleeting deer,

into the Dame’s twisted garden.

Behind the door

of the cottage of mens’ bones,

a voice rang out, seductive, sensuous,

ah lah, ah lah, my lovely boys,

you haven’t caught me yet,

And nor you will this mad March hare.

The hunters on their steel horses,

trembled in the tingling wind

watched the stars stringed in a patched sky

fled, were never seen again

on Ashdown Forest,

where a Dame made herself into a hare.

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