The Year of the Rabbit

As a child I feared the night, the best word
for all the dark things not yet named for me.
I could swallow the word whole.
It could swallow me.

The night has bright teeth, sweet breath.
We count these teeth, call them stars.
Stars eat their own. Orion once had more
than a belt, had a quiver full of arrows.
The sky swallows the moon one quarter at a time,
has a weak stomach, can never keep it down.

The sky will even take time in its mouth,
the whole white egg of it in the unhinged jaw.
Clocks slow like cars moving through high water,
old trucks lumbering up hills.

I used to watch the rabbit hutch,
its shingles gleaming in the frostlight.
Night moved with the strength of water.
Sometimes the whole house was borne away,
sleepers on a raft of dreams, mouths moving in rabbit ways.

Our bones have been human too long,
absorbed too much starlight. They grow
less heavy, less dense, ease us toward oceans,
the watery mirrors of the sky.
Some lose the ability to tell where water ends and air begins.
Rabbits count the doubled stars as something they should fear.

It's not as if we've never been rabbits,
never slept in the hollows of trees, the blood sound
steady in our ears like rain. Wet eyes shining
in the dark with something of the moon in them.

copyright 2007 K
bio
Barnwood magazine
Contents 07