Rabbits

play with each other sometimes:

one is frozen, like a protester,

the other charges like a tank

until the first jumps, his crack of fresh snow

whips through the air like a gunshot. The tank

passes in its wake of rubble and debris

and swivels, tread

conditioned to the soft terrain. They keep at it,

brothers sparsely covered in their spartan pelts,

far removed from anger. Cain

refuses Abel, his kill hand

clenched in granules of chunky snow, his cudgel

lost in a millennium of slow chiasma.

My ruddy child

is wild with fear. He scatters them

into the shadows thrown by a pumpkin moon

who tries to hide his homely face

behind tattered wisps of argent cloud.

‘Adam’,

I call to my boy,

‘let them live.’