Rabbit Skull
by
Radiance Angelina Petro
Up past the white-crowned clover patch,
and the stacks of firewood in the woodshed, up past
the late-July cornfield with its stalks growing
yellow tassels from the newly forming
tightly-swaddled ears of corn, I found a rabbit skull
on the ground beneath a linden tree. It had clearly
been there awhile, and I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed it before.
I picked it up gently by the eye socket and examined its rows
of molars leading up to the curved incisors at the end of its mouth.
Of course I got to thinking about the surprise of being caught
and how wide its eyes must have been, and how hard its heart
must have beat, and how long it was before the last.
I thought about how the flesh of the rabbit was long-ago
digested in the belly of a fox, where it turned into milk for her kits,
and it was hard not to smile and weep at the same time,
it was hard not to stand and wonder, looking up
at the morning sky, it was hard not to lift the little skull
towards that self-same sky, and pray.