The Weasel (IP)

based on a Welsh poem called ‘Y Gwenci’ (The Weasel) by R Williams Parry, that I liked very much (content and poetry) in my childhood.

I stood transfixed (not knowing I was watched);
I could not move my gaze or tremble, shake.
They thought me rooted, stiff and lifeless, dead,
and deaf to claps and shouts – I could not wake,
for mesmerised by what they could not see
– the tiny creature’s beady eye, and dance
froze all my limbs, engrossed, as in a trance;
when they returned they saw me darting fast
my legs could suddenly move off at last
– it looked as though I played, a happy mummy
just racing through the grass to tease her bunny:
that one that held me spell-bound won the sprint,
the snake-like biter with the white shirt front;
one watcher stunned wrote down my tale in verse –
a country walk, with shock – its telling terse.