Stone

A baby rabbit crawled into a Ziploc bag—sandwich size on my bedroom floor—its small
stone-coloured body wedged sideways—doll eyes staring—lying so still I thought it must
have orchestrated its own demise—which is what the coroner wrote on my brother’s death
certificate after his motorbike lost control on the 20 km/h left-hand bend into Pauanui—he
was the author of his own demise yet the rabbit the cat brought in—now in the sandwich
bag—was still alive—even a fox can trip over a stone and a poignant road sign can be
obscured by a ponga frond in need of a trim—I carried the rabbit out onto the grass—eased
him out of the see-through bag—little cottontail bobbed back to his burrow under the bank
made of family and earth—a baby rabbit is called a kit.

tree ferns unfurl
new beginnings
stone ends

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Jane Bloomfield’s poetry is published or forthcoming in Tarot, Turbine | Kapohau, a fine line, Does It Have Pockets?, Roi Fainéant Press, Dust Poetry Magazine, Newsroom, and Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook. She lives in Tāhuna Queenstown.