Rescue
Vellum fragile, tense and warm
Two baby rabbits flushed from their nest
Mouse-bodied, with translucent skin
The first I cupped into a glove
And almost couldn't breathe
So much life, contained
Pulsing and hot
Like the blood veined in its ears
Which, though not for owning, I wanted to own
Its immature eyes, its forehead's significant dome
And legs that were meant to flee, even from me
So I returned it to the pine-straw nest
To the huddled sibling rumps
While the second infant fell into a sewer
Into mud and garbage and piled debris
Beneath our dense suburban street
Hours later I snared it free
Hot and muddy and still in the trance
Of overlarge eyes and cowering stance
But cooled by satisfaction, clean in the knowledge
That rabbits should die in the hard-run hunt
Even those nursed in tame bed-roses
Too close to the storm sewer grate
And far from any beagles' noses
A Dove, for Beginnings
So today I heard this noise
The one a dove makes in flight
The pitched whiffle of fright
It is, apparently, wings
Sculpted feather beating aloud
Through the neighborhood air
Where all sound begins
With a turbulent leaving
How the dove's wing speaks
Cleaving whistled goodbyes
Into further meanings of flight
Nothing of lung or tongue
Where air is usually sung
I imagine feathers in my mouth
A vocal plumage of facts
A cacophony of acts
Perhaps in every throat, a dove
Yearning toward its mate
Building messy nests of vowel
In which to raise new phonics
To mean more than staying
More than variation's genes
That shaped wings to sing
The mourning dove's departure
In case I wasn't already jealous
Mutely aware of inertia
And fright, and mourning
And the cold silence of hands
With no sounds of their own
To clap against the land, to whiffle
In the wind, to fly away
In search of easier things to say