Tonight I walk south first,
impatient with increments–
with the hedge of peonies
unwadding, with the Rome
in chalk that walkers sack
grain by shell-pink grain.
The slowness of small dramas:
sometimes it is a comfort,
the time-lapse slideshow
flush in shots per second,
and sometimes an abrasive.
Tonight I walk south first,
a scout for strange dogs
and new piano lessons, for toys
chipped in different places
and dropped in different places
by different kids raptured,
like their fellows, to bed
but instead the unaccustomed
route gives me the tamest totem
from the oldest album:
my childhood rabbit bank.
Unblinking, ears scissored,
buzz-cut, it would jingle if shaken.
. . .
Except, of course, it would not.
This specimen’s fur does not part
around a slot in its back and it is
startled only into a momentary
stillness. The unruly bellows still
work the ribs under its hide.
. . .
Once I saved inside a rabbit
what change I earned by drying pots
after supper. Once I saved inside
a rabbit what change spares, rarified,
made dear: this and this again
and again, a sameness of small dramas.
