Poem for a Rabbit
       

Beside my car this morning, heart
like a cooked cherry, string
of pink gut, tuft
of fur. A rabbit is watchful,
all softness and nothing
to defend with. Imagine
living in seasons, pulling clover
through teeth, hazard
on the move from all directions—
snake and fox, hawk
and dog. All those eyes, looking
for you, body born as food
for other bodies, fine muscles made
to enrich something that creeps
back into the brush when morning comes—
does it matter, that after recoiling
what I felt was relief, that nobody new
was looking to take my heart
and abandon it in the street?

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Copyright © 2017 Gretchen Marquette All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission