I Had a Pet Rabbit

i say child but what i mean is now

still preferring the moss lawn to the

“superior” grass lawn my parents

broke their backs over seeding

in the backyard           with bad tempers

i regret decisions         i weep

for days           come see me

pen a wee poem about the yank

of the setting sun on my heart

            and how

it breaks time and moulds it into

coils like a permanent         i drive to the end

of gluttony each day lie

on a wide alabaster rock happy

but still full of doubt         i know

that i won’t be shown everything

by joni mitchell and neither will she

by me or anyone else and this is how

to overcome loneliness           not to sleep

means you are inaugurated into poetry

which is a type of nightwatchmanhood

according to my bedmate

one night i answered him promptly

both loud and soft keep your feet off the lawn

or bury it quickly and i must have been dreaming

of the tender grass seeds, or of my parents

or of the rabbit my friend’s cat killed

in her very kitchen

a baby rabbit who’d spent its young life eating colours

careful careful careful

and still its loosed eye

had rolled right to the other side of the room