The Rabbit Hole

The Rabbit Hole

Rabbits are quick and soft. They live
underground, but near enough to us
to burrow into our minds. Rabbit holes
invite us to scurry into darkness. That
is the human mind: we see a hole,
wonder where could that take me?
The colonizing impulse, we cannot
help it, hardly. Rabbits can predict
what we do not know. Their feet
run along the earth, so fast and sleek,
and we want a part of it. We take
a rabbit’s foot, tie it to our keys
and clasp it while making decisions.
It comforts us. Upon waking into
a new month, we say rabbit, rabbit,
rabbit, and we leap into the stream
of good luck. Beneath this earth,
a current of rabbits running, seeking
safety, fortune, home. They are helpless
but clever. Rabbits do not want to be
caught, they escape our traps, our hands.
We follow them, we track them.
Pursuit is our specialty. Especially
the pursuit of that which is reluctant
to be caught. When women wear ears
and a powder-puff tail, they are bunnies
that do not run, that we can look at
as long as we like. And hundreds
of years ago, we spoke of coney-catching,
wink, wink, of country matters.
Coney birthed the word we should
not say, not to a woman or in public.
Our most vulnerable parts are always
being likened to some creature, there is
both safety and danger in euphemism,
how it covers. We could have done worse
than the rabbit. This is its year, the year
of the rabbit. Let us be reminded of how
we are weak, of our desire to see below
the surface, where we have never been.