Rexie died last summer battling
a Honda and Isaac drank the last
batch of dog house hooch you made
four years ago.

The neighbors cut the front yard for us.
No one cuts the back -- the grass
tassels, turns brown, scatters seeds.

Where are you going? When will you be back?
Suddenly, one pair of your shoes on the floor
and the living room is a mess.

Maybe the moon is big enough for you.
Or the desert is big enough. Or the sky.
Or the ocean. Or the Antarctic.
Or the desert. Or the moon. Or a mountain
somewhere with a desert and a moon.

Some long finger beckons our children:
come and live in this foreign city, come and live
in this new and beautiful family. Here
is better food. Here, your own new window
to look out of. A view I will only glimpse
from over your shoulder.

I'm the rabbit in the woods.
I see too much. Even the trees
are dangerous with their snapping twigs
and owl's nests. Listen, son, listen.
Listen to everything. Stay still, son.
Stay down. Don't make a sound.

But you are afraid of nothing, yet. So far, nothing
has killed you. Every moon you've seen
has been blue and luck pulls in
like a Japanese train. Why wouldn't you expect
holy crusades and rhyming couplets?
Buckets of money and unrelenting true love
in deep warm grass, along a friendly quiet road?

-- Linda Lee McDonald