Tigress from the east

The smile of a hedgehog

I see him as a puppet, arms with swords.

And indeed, he never denies that, crawling in his shell of twenty-four hours,

In to a ball, a round grab, a beating starfish skin on beach of black sea.

Yet nay, he is a being that smiles.

A stifled mask, sews, unsews, knits and unties in each spasm of that young,

Oldman's mountain. Grannies used to tell every little girl that hedgehog is a land for none.

But not for me! This rocked climb peaks its way to a determined, tiny climax until his downfall

In deep, in curve of a newborn.

And now we know he has a pair of eyes, and those two black beans stare through pointed nose and drenched, in happy sweated dews with four toiling, small palms.

Eyebrows uplifting, he has those two prominent teeth- gentle bites of foreign polemics.

Then we know a primeval smile when our heads, lower into the earth and watch!

Across layers and layers of green mists.

Infants' smile is almost as great as yours, little hedgehog, in your fresh air of the first yawn.

In your triumph after winning your first breath,

In your extremis after mouths of summer fruits under your milk way,

The first second a baby boy is torn from mother's womb, and darting, towards revived wholeness- a helmet,

Your abode beyond duels of the day and crouches of the night, in deep silence breaks a smile,

When a simple bow of clean water bath your dust, and you shriek hard with throat of reborn.

I have walked through the frosted forest of my winter; a rabbit gave me a tap of her two tiny hands

And then run, away with me from labouring farmers of their carrots and smoked London bricks.

The hedgehog watches and sings to himself, rolling forward with his sharpened, polished paws in thousands of steps,

Searching for the forever tomorrow in a full lap- a roll! His arms throw and clap into a buried smile.