Poem 165

Looking for a picnic spot instead I get a reminder of the gravity of mortality, the lifelong pull to the ground on all of us … though (however often the reminder) still as inexplicable as it is inevitable …

( vivid images, you can almost smell this bunny, good half-rhyme with rabbit and gadget, and alliteration/assonance on gears greased – I like nozzling because of the simultaneous sense it gives of both ‘sucking’ and ‘nuzzling’ down, and I love how the last lines sum up the transformation … )

Dreaming Grass

The rabbit is a gadget of bones
swimming into the ground
            grass grown through
the drum-flattened skin
            dropped down here
from a hawk or disease
crusting his blood
                                  old age starving him
to earth

not meaning to part his grave
we recoil from his lack of eyes
the revealed intricacies
a wind pulls sun-crisp fur
                                              he waits
for rain to melt him
a little more
                     dreaming grass
is grass
               ground nozzling him down
ground he kicked
          away from
these dry gears greased
and shining