Life shivers between yourself and us: help us to stretch

toward the kingdom of our burrows in the earth: we’ll never occupy

again the silk-soft that was a womb, but we wander the night grass with you,

searching for a tenderness, an innocence at birth: until the quiet winds cut

the quiet breath from your mouth and your hindquarters stamp, Quickly, I must go —

Rabbit, winding up your stride, in your alignment, recalling full stretch,

a god’s arrow-head, shaft, lengthening from nose to tail, aching to occupy

the whole damn bubble of the moment of each movement: if you

made it, what would snap, whose shining fingers, what scene would cut

abruptly to another, what deity float gently in to bid us her good night?

Rabbit, laid ragged at the fold of day’s field, where the sparrow-hawk stretched

the stars’ scarf across her wing: with your velvet heart, you occupied

the blood’s old theatre: with your hushed ballet of spring, you

performed the coiled rites you have taught us tonight: showed our ropes of matter cut

by the one puppet-master, hanging in his own winds.