Check Your Watch, Your Calendar  

At 2:00 A.M. a white rabbit

nibbles at the front lawn

to the maddest insect music

of the Summer.

He’s bigger than the natives

in their tweed-and-dove fur,

one ear bent to horizontal,

eyes pink in my flashlight.

 

“You might as well wear

a sandwich board with ‘EAT ME’

printed on it,” say I.

He finishes a mouthful and replies,

“You don’t remember me?

I’m Teddy. Lived here the Autumn

you went to kindergarten.

You left me at the petting zoo.”

 

Under street lamp light I deny it,

“No, rabbits don’t live forty years,”

but as he hops out of reach,

over where the crabapple stood

I know it’s Teddy.

 

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

He looks back and grins,

coins in his eyes,

a hipster in midnight tea shades.

“I know,” he soothes, “I know,”

and toddles toward the woods.  

 

David P. Kozinski / dpkozinski@comcast.net

published in Up and Under: The QND Review, Spring/Summer 2007