Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
Night hangs and I, nocturnal, scout the grounds,
the hedgehog, shuffling insomnia-laden under the moon,
head among worms, I cannot see the astral dancers make their rounds,
trapped in a homeland of windswept grass and rainswept loam.
My patter a ritual, earth’s epidermis feigns a heavenly taste
yet so anti-celestial, living from night to night to night
mired, the entanglement of root and briar and living wasted,
ensconced in darkness, I’ve forgotten what it is to see the light.
The hedgehog senses predator, confronts her choices
tight entombment in a prickling shell, waiting for teeth,
or else to flee. Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
I curled so long I no longer remembered what it meant
to live without a spiny wall, self-made sarcophagus, dark and tight.
It took the gouge of jaws to make me race away, seeking freedom, seeking light.
Clare M Coombe
Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
Night hangs and I, nocturnal, scout the grounds,
the hedgehog, shuffling insomnia-laden under the moon,
head among worms, I cannot see the astral dancers make their rounds,
trapped in a homeland of windswept grass and rainswept loam.
My patter a ritual, earth’s epidermis feigns a heavenly taste
yet so anti-celestial, living from night to night to night
mired, the entanglement of root and briar and living wasted,
ensconced in darkness, I’ve forgotten what it is to see the light.
The hedgehog senses predator, confronts her choices
tight entombment in a prickling shell, waiting for teeth,
or else to flee. Do you know how fast a hedgehog runs?
I curled so long I no longer remembered what it meant
to live without a spiny wall, self-made sarcophagus, dark and tight.
It took the gouge of jaws to make me race away, seeking freedom, seeking light.
Clare M Coombe
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