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This is Your Poem, Rabbit

"I never thought the wildness in you would ever let me hold you"

Published onFeb 22, 2023
This is Your Poem, Rabbit

Photo by Sachin Barodia: Pexels.com

I remember asking you
was it a coyote
but I knew he would have taken you
I came closer
you couldn't run
I nudged you
there was no blood
your ears laid back
and I stroked that soft inner space
between my fingers.

I never thought
the wildness in you
would ever let me hold you
but there we sat a while
you in my lap
I felt the length of you
no breaks
and no leaping away in pain.

It was early spring
I remember a racing under your ribs
your chest rising in quick half breaths
the shed door swinging
in the March wind.
Did you get in there
find something
as I pondered
the rage of every argument
unresolved
stuff to kill still in the shed?

Your eyes opened
as if to see if I was still there
and mine closed
as if shutting out the world
could make it go away
or help you stay in it.


Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes is a retired college professor emerita from the University of Wisconsin system and a former librarian who practiced in a log cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin. Poetry has been published in three countries and languages, with recent publications in Ekphrastic Review, Rosebud, Moss Piglet, Wallop Zine, Jimson Weed, among others. Her most recent chapbook, When Wilding Returns, is forthcoming from Cyberwit Press.

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