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Elizabeth Madox Roberts
When they said the time to hide was mine,
I hid back under a thick grape vine.
And while I was still for the time to pass,
A little gray thing came out of the grass.
He hopped his way through the melon bed
And sat down close by a cabbage head.
He sat down close where I could see,
And his big still eyes looked hard at me,
His big eyes bursting out of the rim,
And I looked back very hard at him.
hope is a little doll
trimmed with ribbon
a pretty slave
buy a rabbit but like
the head of a king
never find him in a hat
at home plate
only a rabbit
late in the fall
owls of six o’clock doubt
carry me home
whither come my rabbits
good fire good charcoal good night
Chance is a rogue: my clothes tore.
I saw no peace, my wife being impatient to buy it.
A rabbit and lobster desire to marry, it is said.
having a fit in the garden
my whole mind against
one stone
a rabbit at the fire
Putting a garden in so often entails putting wildlife out. You develop an adversarial relationship with nature, fencing, trapping, shooting, poisoning, getting a guard dog… It’s this sad reality that many years ago turned me against what had been the reigning passion of my youth.
onion bed
pulling out
wild onions
A rabbit has squeezed
into a ring of fencing
to browse on dogwood sprouts
and can’t get out.
The snow crunches under
my boots as I loom up,
the small animal
beating against its cage
like a panicked heart.
don’t be so eager to find yourself
the deer rolls her eye in panic
at your approach
birds take flight
the rabbit’s pelt quivers
consider the possibility
that they’re right about you
those whom we trust to predict earthquakes
stop trying to dot your i’s
broken columns
from a Greek temple
where no one now remembers
the name of the god
Eileen walks slow
in an empty
place
breathe around her, the
world is off to four
directions, and I wait
and I listen for her
to come by branches
in forest where I'm hidden.
who she is, who
ever she will be
I wait in the corner
of her eyes.
rabbit cross shadow line in field frostcover,
marmot under the stone
coon begging in Yosemite Valley
That in his face
was no orgasm
but a rabbit,
paw caught
steel at the base
of the tree,
which was his face
was generous
spread to heaven.
At night the roots
would sneak out for water
past the trap in which wrestled
his contraries, was my teacher
& never knew why
his sternness recalled my father
as Reich in Freud's
Enchantment on the river
And magic on the lake,
The world has turned to crystal,
Don't speak or it will break!
The road seems new, the valley
An unfamiliar place,
Where trees are trimmed with spangles
And stones with silver lace.
A pink and white, furred rabbit
With a star-tuft for a tail,
Hops up the hill by moonlight
And leaves a fairy trail.
I think we mar the meadow
So white, and smooth as suede,
We ought to shine in satin
Or glitter in brocade.