Year of the Rabbit
Unlike the churning shit-show-roar of whateverthat was we just left behind, this year, onlinechatter tells me, will be one of contemplationand hope. Maybe. Right now, I’m holding stillthe best I can, having followed once again thissame path to this same hill with its one treeI can’t name, accompanied by Gloria the pug,harbinger of nothing, prowl-snorting for any scrapshe can find. I’m trying to hold still, to allow someof what the world gives back just now to summona faith in change—pug pant, wind rummagingbranches, bird fussing with a length of yarn,Pleasant Street traffic slosh—but truth be toldthis half-ass attempt at mindfulness isn’t offeringmuch. Last week,husband’s body has betrayed him again and, as ifI’d forgotten the way words work, was surprisedhow weightless each one seemed. ,a poet once wrote, Sure, I get it,although there are days when the wind seemslike nothing more than wind, its pockets longemptied of secrets, offering up bits of falteringmelodies as it moves past trees and the metaltubes we’ve hooked into branches in the hopeof creating song. Once, the wind made somethingI could call music whenever it slipped throughthe wooden slats of the hutch my father builtfor Penelope, the rabbit our dog dragged homefrom a den she raided in what must have feltlike glee. I can’t remember why she was calledPenelope—the name, once spoken aloud, becamewhat she was called—or what part of the story,if any, it matters now to tell: milk pearling froman eye-dropper, the way she’d wait, tremblingin summer heat before lunging, teeth-bared,for my outstretched hand, or how in the endwe gave her away to an amateur magiciannamed, hand to god, Shrimplin the Mysterious,after which her life took a turn for the worse. is one. is another. I don’t knowmuch about Hardy or birds, but enough to rememberhis poem was first leashed to the god-awful title“By the Century’s Deathbed,” and that there’s nota thrush alive which understands the idea of hope—any song the poet heard would have been aboutlaying claim to breeding territory, meaning
