THE ONE NOT CHOSEN

Third sister,

aunt one forgets to send a card to.

Boy on a bench, second smallest,

not quick, not precise, not cunning.

Culled chick, branch-bruised peach,

chair wobbly, unused, set in a corner.

For some, almost good, almost lucky

not to be chosen,

though equally accidental—

the thirty-year-buried land mine

chooses the leg of another.

(How the mouth struggles

to say it: lucky, good.)

Most are not chosen, most mostly watch.

So it must be.

The watched

(not escaping pride, not truly minding)

bemoan their responsibilities,

so many anxieties, demands, complications.

And still: any rabbit the center

of its own rabbit world,

its universe axis a nest of tamped-down grasses.

It looks out its ground-level eyes,

is warm, is curious, hungry,

its heart beats faster or slower

with its own rabbit fate.

A rabbit’s soul cannot help

but choose its own ears, its own paws,

its own startlement, sleepiness, longings,

it has a rabbit allegiance,

and the pink nose, which

could have been drawn in charcoal

by Dürer’s sister, but wasn’t,

takes in its own warmth and fur-scent,

glints pinkly,

pinkly alters the distant star’s light

in its own cuniculan corner

among vast and unanswerable worlds,

without even knowing it does so.