Rabbit on

The flowers on the kitchen table
looked happy and fresh,
white, yellow and blue.
Sunlight streamed through
the basement window.

Harriet, only five but
with an eye for pretty things
stood and admired but
said nothing.

A few days later those flowers
drooped, wrinkled.
"What happened to the flowers?"
"They don't last long when
they've been cut - especially
in the kitchen".

Harriet was stunned. She
looked at me, stared,
"I don't want to die!"

What could I say? It was easier
for her brother - well at least
he and I watched Star Trek
with its occasional sense of
cosmic recycled dust

Months later, in the heat
of Summer,
we were in the garden. Still
hot dusty bare earth. Just
their old swing. And a hutch
for Bandit, the white rabbit.
At our old house he used to
come in the kitchen and sit
watching television, we said.

'Uncle' came round with his
sledgehammer. To drive metal
stake holders for a new fence
- Bandit liked to jump the brick
walls as well.
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
in the dusty heat of the sunny
day. And the rabbit stretched
out, quivered. "There's something
wrong". "He's not well, dying,
dead".

Harriet had disappeared. I looked
downstairs, upstairs, in her room.
Back in the garden, there she was,
kneeling in the dusty earth,
beside the rabbit,
stroking it very gently. She looked
at me, stared, calm.
"See, I'm not afraid any more".

So we buried Bandit, the rabbit,
by the wall, where the apple
trees grow now, and the lawn with
visiting foxes. And the newted
lily pond where the swing used to be.