In a Hurry

5 1 R I N A H U R R Y C A T H E R I N E S T A P L E S It’s the peeling birch and the lake glimpsed through it, sheets buckling in wind, the emerald seams of moss between pavers, three children rounding a bend. Sky bluer than vetch, a small hare on the garden path deciding, and the lake roiled, her waves no longer steadily east but blown hard to the far side. Beyond evergreens edged with gorse before the path ends, the blackberries are humming with dragonflies, beyond that, the sheep and the hawthorn hedge where the rain has not yet begun, where the thrush move in and out of wind in the quiet that is theirs, where music begins and body skates with mind’s whim. It’s beauty oblique as wooden shutters close on a seam of light and a husband’s glance travels like a fox on a path, staring back, will you follow? ...