Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘bunny’

Close Encounters


 
 
It was a little mangy, to be honest,
the rabbit in the forest that came close to me—
close enough I could see the way sunlight
made his long ears glow pink. Close enough
for me to coo and praise his remarkably long rabbit feet,
praise the white socks of his fur,
praise the bright brown of his eyes.
Even his patchy, uneven molting couldn’t stop me
from falling in love with the way he leapt
from fallen trunks into patches of bluebells.
We were all staring at him, all six of us,
wondering why he would come so close,
but I took his appearance personally—
like when we read a fortune cookie fortune
and believe there was a bit of our destiny in it.
I cannot see a bunny without believing it’s my son.
I know. It isn’t my son. I also know it is.
Every bunny reminds me he was here.
Every bunny is a chance to push past
my rational mind and fling open the doors
of love. Every bunny, especially this one who
comes so close, seems to say, Sweetheart,
don’t you believe in grace? And as the bunny
leaps from log to duff, I think, I do, I do, I do.

Read Full Post »


 
 
Snug little lump of timid flesh
whose fur matches the brown
grass of late winter, silent
little being with your long
pointy ears twisted back,
oh, soft little wide-eyed prey,
thank you for returning
to the yard this morning.
After two weeks of not seeing
your fidgety-whiskered nose,
I met your apparent loss like an elegy
I didn’t want to write. I am tired
of writing elegies, though this
is what life asks us to do—
to meet the world of loss
and learn the beauty
that grows from it.
So imagine my joy today when
I was driving in a faraway town
and my husband sent me a photo
of your mild, quiet bunny-ness
nibbling grass beside the porch,
one shiny brown eye open
to the camera. A wild gratefulness
for life flooded me then, keen
as a pasqueflower, bright
as a globe willow greening
on the winter side of spring;
and my heart leapt out
from beneath its shelf of fear,
vulnerable as you, little bunny.
 

Read Full Post »


 
 
For the fourth time in four weeks,
I slip my spade into the dark soil
of the half-circle garden.
I make twenty shallow holes,
then lift the pansies from crinkly
plastic containers and drop
the root-bound squares into the earth.
Within hours, the small brown bunny
arrives with his pink twitchy nose
and his small round lump
of soft bunny body,
and while I wash dishes
I meet through the window
his innocent, unblinking gaze
as he consumes a dozen
deep purple petals
in small, efficient tugs.
He looks at me as if to say,
You love me. And I do.
I croon at the bunny how
cute his small ears. How perfect
his bliss. How good he is
for eating his pretty bunny food.
Tomorrow, the rest
of the blooms will be gone.
In a week, the leaves will
be gone, too. Every. Single. One.
And I will go buy more pansies.
How sweet it’s become,
this path of surrender,
the strange joy that rises in me
when I see my precious pansies
nibbled to the roots.
Now that the stakes are low,
it’s much easier to bow
to the way things are.
For the price of pansies,
I can practice again and again
how to find true delight
in this art of letting go.

Read Full Post »

Unscheduled


 
 
No matter the day is already planned
to the minute. No matter how pressing
the deadline, the must do, the should.
It takes only a second to look out the window
 
and see the brown bunny in the brown grass.
It takes only a second to fall in love
with the twitchy nose, the nervous eyes,
the lumpy shape of bunny.
 
How quickly the known world cants toward awe
when wonder slips in—wonder forged
not from epiphany or greatness
but from the barest instant of meeting what is real.

Read Full Post »

In the Look

 
 
A bunny knows when it’s being watched,
as if attention itself has a weight.
As if it feels my stare like a rush,
like a threatening hand, like a stroke.
But when I graze the bunny
with a brush of a glance
and with half-lidded eyes,
my body faintly angled to the side,
the bunny will bear
the gravity of my notice
and I may watch all I want
as it nibbles and twitches,
hops and rests.
And so it is I learn to meet my past
with a softened gaze, with gauzy eyes,
to meet a memory slant.
The memories let me linger now,
increasingly unskittish.
I do not try to touch them.
They multiply like rabbits.

Read Full Post »