Rabbit

You almost feel sorry for it,
so weakly exposed, in the sun
just starting to fade, barely
past four o’clock.
It listens to the men’s feet
crunch on the ground;
the removed commotion of a cat
busy in the hen house.

If only the noise would stop
the rabbit could run; it knows how to run.
It needs a straight path.

Cringe at the thought of the comic
zigzag across the field that makes the farmers
curse and laugh as they take aim.

Focus through the depths
of the shifting shades of the field’s grasses
on the rabbit, with its twisting side eye
unreadably dark until the crescent of white
shows itself, still, it stays still.

Maryrose Flanigan