NaPoWriMo 4-20-2014: Easter

That confusingly appropriate episode
on a bewilderingly beautiful
near-Chicago Easter afternoon,
when a baby bunny is discovered
hopelessly wedged between the spring's
fresh rabbit fencing
and the galvanized garage-side;

When you carefully coax it backwards to freedom,
and it scrambles blindingly
back toward its trap,
then pivots suddenly and bolts, panicked,
into the open garage,
where you chase and corner it and
gently bring it to your hands
while the kids cheer,

and you walk,
caressing its fuzzy head and calmly whispering
assurances,

and you place it safely under the yews.

Then ten minutes later,
a shrill rabbit-shaped cry
when the pickup, its driver cautiously eyeing
your children in the yard,
meets the tiny rabbit in the road.

Right in front of the house.
In front of the wife and kids.

Two plastic bags,
the kids banished to the back,
you approach the bundle of dead fir
in the street.

But its heart is beating
there, still,
a million miles a minute,
its terrified eyes
unblinking, and wide
and staring up at your own.

And you have to retrieve a shovel,
quickly,
to finish what the truck did not.

The same shaking hands
that had loved
this perfectly formed, gray
gathering of misadventure
so carefully before,
now so carefully aim,
and swing for a quick end

there,
on Easter Sunday,
and hurrying to do it,
in front of God
and all the neighbors.