Twas a barren time in England,
And food was hard to find.
When archer Barret took his bow,
And went hunting, though almost blind.

Through the darkest forest undergrowth,
The archer rambled through the morning,
When in a clearing, by a flowing stream,
An elk appeared with little warning.

The old archer knocked his bow in haste,
And pulled with all his might,
But the arrow missed by twenty feet,
And the startled elk took flight.

But undeterred, the archer trailed,
The elk for several hours,
Through wind and rain and rough terrain,
Thick brush and fields of flowers.

When suddenly he caught a glimpse,
Of a rabbit or a hare,
Hopping through the undergrowth,
As though it didn’t have a care.

The urge to shoot in haste again,
Was quickly overridden,
And instead he looked around to find,
Somewhere he could be hidden.

Then where his prey was frolicking,
He saw to his delight,
A giant oak, so tall and strong,
And grown to such a height.

“Genius”, he whispered,
Chuckling to himself,
For in his youth he’d been well known,
For his cunning and his stealth.

So having reached the tree, he climbed it,
And crawled out on a limb,
Almost tasting now the rabbit stew,
That hopped not far from him.

He slowly knocked his arrow,
And pulled the string right back,
Shimmying further along the bough,
Until he heard a frightful crack,

And the ground rushed up to meet him,
Before the sudden, painful thud,
And a dozen startled rabbits,
Gazed at him in the mud,

Before scurrying off in all directions,
Through allotment, hedge and fence,
Leaving him convinced that they,
Were laughing as they went,

Enraged he took his longbow,
And the arrows he hadn’t snapped,
And shot them like a man possessed,
At the fleeing rabbits back,

Though not one would reach its target,
One did skip off a tree,
And ricochet from off stone,
And strike him in the knee,

Though it was really just a flesh wound,
Not embedded in the bone,
He then realized he’d walked in circles,
And was not too far from home.

And he noticed that one of the rabbits
Had suddenly stopped by the river,
He reached for an arrow to kill it,
But there were no arrows left in his quiver.

So in anger he hurtled his longbow,
But it caught in a branch overhead,
Slapping him so hard in the temple,
I couldn’t possibly repeat what he said.

But insanity took over a moment,
And he threw both his shoes and he screamed,
Then he stood on his sock, tripped over a rock,
And landed face down in the stream.


With the cold water returning his reason,
He conceded his hunting was done,
But no-one would know what had happened,
Because he wouldn’t tell anyone

So putting away his longbow,
And whatever arrows he could retrieve,
He tried to think of some excuse,
That his long suffering wife might believe.

Why his hunting had been unsuccessful,
And the wound to his leg he’d sustained,
Why half of his arrows were broken,
Yet he’d returned empty handed again.

But unable to think of excuses,
He returned to his wife, Mrs Barret,
Saying, “there’s no rabbit or deer, but you’ll be pleased to hear,
I did manage to bag us a carrot.

By S.E.Ralph.

23-2-2017.