Rebecca McHale, Untitled, 2020
Mixed media collage
The rabbit falls asleep in his nest,
his chest rising and falling almost
imperceptibly in the shadows
of tall grasses blown
by this constant, searching-cold wind.
The rabbit falls asleep in his nest,
which once belonged to a very large
bird. It was made of the softest things—
velvety stalks and human hair,
mosses of all colors.
He found this nest on the ground,
waiting for him, brought down
from some tall tree and carried
through the moor by sharp
gusts, jerky movements, gentle hands.
The rabbit sleeps on a single, broken egg.
The rabbit slowly, with each breath
and small break, loses his outline. Slowly,
he opens up in ways he hasn’t before.
The shocking white shell is him, now,
and he can feel each sharp cracked edge
with sudden understanding of how
it feels to fragment, to feel cold air
on the inside walls.
He sleeps and breathes and
is the nest, is lovingly made
and dearly missed.
The rabbit is the bird, too, sleeping
where the bird was always meant to sleep.
He knows, through deep memory,
how to catch currents high in the air, to
dip in and out of wind as fish dip in and out
of water. He can feel when a single
feather is out of place.
The rabbit is the wind, then. He sleeps
and loses his outline and blows away,
piece by piece. He remembers, once,
the wind was born a single gorgeous power,
pure tumbling energy wrestling with
itself, like young rabbits in dark
burrows beneath our feet.