The Year of the Rabbit

I

It's also the winter of the frogs.

They cluster on the Cornish lawn

all rubberleg and slapfoot.

In bed, I hear their wet eyes blinking.

 

Some faceless relative makes a gift of you

their identity bled over by tree-bulb embers

igniting the home of your eyes.

I declare you a hare but name you Rabbit.

 

Instantly, you become my invalid.

I diagnose you as dependent

press smelling salts to your cloth nose.

Your fever's going down.

I do what I can.

 

On the slick drift home

you're left for lost, burrowed

into a bitter new life, perhaps

under the petrol station; but you wait

stuffed down by the door

misshapen and patient in the crumbs.

 

II

Through the night of a new house

gusts a heady rabbit stew.

The recipe's hereditary;

I take that to mean

it takes after you.

 

Our host unfurls full bowls

around me, the aroma thick, savoury

as her grandfather's voice.

He rumbles a language I like to speak;

but your squashed felt face

shocks my jaw locked

leaves my plate unsated.

 

The family dines. Amidst its clatter

he humours my remorse

fills the hungry form: a lesson in division

and raw rhubarb to gnaw on

stalked and conjured

from the flat, gentle palm of his garden.

 

My pet fingernail—

slammed black in a Breton door

snagged on buckled seatbelt

and ripped, now, into oblivion—

rests in the carpet.

I squeeze the pallid tip, fascinated

as easy flesh gives way.