This spring our yard has been full of bunnies! It has been especially fun to watch our tuxedo cat Orion communicating with them. Orion is an indoor cat now but if he ventured outside, would he dance and play with the bunnies like the Peanuts character Snoopy did? Or would he hunt and eat them, like the younger, East Texas version of himself?
The contemporary British poet Polly Atkin composed a wonderful poem describing her encounters with a rabbit in her yard. I especially love her water and dolphin metaphors! Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit had many exploits and she encouraged us all … “We cannot stay home all our lives, we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.”
Rabbit in Morning
When I wake in the morning you are waiting for me,
sat in the yard, still as a tree stump,
only your eyes and nostrils moving,
and the wind in your fur, and the rushing shadow
of leaves crashing over your curve, a green
sea of waves on shingle, combing
your sandy flanks, your reddish back.
After a pause, sure you are watched,
you stretch out into a living leap
and plunge in the pool of long cool grass.
This is the reason I won’t cut the lawn:
to see you so, only ears above water
then arcing over like a dolphin saluting
the sun, playing in the wake of the house
as it sails me on, for sheer pleasure
of throwing yourself up. I want to invite you
in, or to stay, or to not go away,
but you are a wild thing. All I can do
is believe you will keep on being the warm
vaulting life, ravelled round mine,
although I may never hold you.
– Polly Atkin