far

Poetry

A Nonchalance of Rabbits

Randy Streu
issue six

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The city comes alive at night
and I watch through a chain-link fence
as a pair of cottontail rabbits
chase one another through the yard,
brown coats stark against the dusk-tinted green
of the manicured post-office lawn–

unbothered by the threat of Great Horned Owls
who make their home by day
in the tall oaks of the park
and by night take to the skies,
heads in constant, searching motion,
and looming over the city on telephone poles–

or by the gang of feral cats,
marching together over their territory
of parking lot and small clusters of ash and birch,
proud tails upright in the clowder and
paws soft but defiant on the pavement,
as if every step is a dare–

or by the humans and the noise they carry with them
like a marquee proclaiming their existence,
as though without the sound of bicycle tires
and the barely-legal roar of truck engines,
music from cars, bars, and cell phones,
the world might just forget that we’re here.