The first morning of summer,
not yet 7 a.m.,
yellow blouse, blue running shorts,
black Brooks Ghosts,
silver hair swept back
by a turquoise barrette,
metal water bottle
belted to her waist,
the old woman pauses at the lawn
with the two white birches,
she looks tired, but determined,
the smallest tremor in her legs,
she is looking at a rabbit,
his palomino brown
bisects the emerald green
between the two white columns,
his chest pumps slightly,
more a gesture of breath than breathing,
his underbelly’s silver fur
matches her hair’s back strands,
he looks only at the brown shingled house,
not her,
she thinks of all the rabbits
on all her walks,
now they are coming forward,
pouring from the boxwood and the hollies,
parachuting from dogwoods
and silver maples,
a rabbit phalanx in procession
taking the beach of every lawn,
pouring from every flower bed,
an indomitable stream,
and in an instant, they are gone,
she shifts her head and moves on,
but the rabbit remains, keeping time
between the two white birches.
Jefferson Singer is the Faulk Foundation Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College in New London, CT. He studied creative writing at Amherst College and Harvard University, working with Seamus Heaney and Robert Fitzgerald while at Harvard. Some of his recent poems appeared in the Winter 2022 poetry issue of Sixfold.
