Work of the Week: Rebecca Aronson

Caged Hare

From here the sky is a distant thing, white
as the curtains, which move despite the lack of breeze,
the way the tree tops used to bend,

blending their tips like fingers, touching
one another like shy friends. I dream
I am dusted with the dry snow

just now feathering
the ground. From there I would see the steam
of flakes dissolving as they meet

the sun-struck rocks. They release heat
like laughter. The surprise of collision.
Where would I burrow, then,

into the wide gap of the world?
In here I’m warm and bored,
and made mostly of dreaming.

My fur has thickened with the shortened days;
the children would like to touch it, to plunge
their unsteady hands into the pelt of me

if I’d allow it. I’m dressed for a land
I can’t even taste, can’t smell
aside from the remnants of wind they carry in

on their coats and scarves. I tell you
I am wild as the jay on the window sill, wilder,
since he believes there is something this side of the glass

worth seeing. Even the lengthening shadows give way
to flatness. They spread and flutter
but never ripen, never open,

and nothing lurks anywhere deeper.

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