It’s humid; everything drips. Goldfinches warble in the treetops. A rabbit’s ear twitches, illuminated by the rising sun.
cottontail
As my father walks out of the woods, a rabbit bursts from a rosebush and dashes under the porch. A zebra spider circles the rim of my mug.
Where rabbits take shelter under the lilac, several limbs have been de-barked near the ground, bone-yellow against the crust of snow.
Early morning sounds like spring, with cardinals, titmice and song sparrows tuning up. A rabbit stands on its hind legs to reach lilac buds.
The sky is mangy, with blue patches showing through, and the yard is leprose with tracks. A rabbit twitches under the deer-ravaged rosebush.
The no-longer-drifting snow records moonlit revels: where a vole broke cover, where white-footed mice foraged, where rabbits danced.
Frost has dusted just the two rosettes of mullein leaves beside the driveway: enormous white flowers. A cottontail rabbit bounds past.
The rabbit ambles out of its favorite rose bush—no minks in sight this morning—and nibbles on a tuft of grass at the edge of the driveway.
A large, dark weasel flushes a rabbit from cover and stops, rearing up on its hind legs: mink! We stare at each other with mutual disbelief.
We’ll remember this as the summer a cerulean warbler sang incessantly in the yard, which every day—presto!—produced more rabbits.
Sun strikes the top of the tulip tree—half-grown leaves vibrating in the wind. In the road, the severed hindquarters of a rabbit.
A half-grown rabbit emerges from the rosebush and pauses in the middle of the blue driveway to shake its head and scratch behind its ears.
A rabbit dashes around the yard, chased by another. It feints a departure and sneaks back, ears orange in the sun and veined like leaves.
Frost has silvered the grass where a rabbit grazes, one hop away from a spreading patch of sun. When a crow flies over he flattens his ears.