Jack Thacker – Three Poems

Jack Thacker grew up on a farm in Herefordshire. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, researching contemporary British and Irish poetry and agriculture. He is the co-founder of the York-based poetry magazine, Eborakon.

 

The Hare in the Snow

 

My eyes adjust to a sky

as blank as a headache, a landscape

of snow-cloud florescence.

 

I walk across covered ploughed fields,

down delicate blackthorn hedgerows,

 

when a few feet away a furrow breaks for cover –

 

it runs

it runs and runs

and runs

 

bounding over whiteness, shedding whiteness

 

and where it lay, a crucible of melt

retains its white-hot heartbeat.

 

 

 

Barn Owl

 

My cave drip footsteps fill the barn

before I sense the silent sound

 

of wing in darkness –

 

a carpet beat out of my dimension,

sent from the vacuum of space,

 

a pure white blade

 

of soft steel – I see a feathered baby

face. With torchlight I follow

 

its flight path

 

as it traces a scythe on the night sheet

and is posted through a hole

 

in the velvet.

 

 

 

The Falconer

 

One day, he asked me would I like to

handle the hawk? I declined the offer.

 

How could the bones of the creature weigh

only as much as air? Its talons tightened

 

onto his stove gloved hand.

But the talent of hawks was lured by his wrist.

 

He’d release his Harris to the heavens

and watch it disappear – we’d turn our heads

 

and try to predict the stretch of skyline

from which it would return.

 

2 Comments

Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.

Birtereply
March 11, 2016 at 3:34 pm

Beautiful poems! I’m not good at analyzing poems, but even I read these three poems and have vivid images in my head.

John Mreply
March 11, 2016 at 6:21 pm

Three very fine and evocative poems. Thank you Jack.

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