by Laura Johnson
A large rabbit dawdles near my treeline,
and our beagle, though she knows nothing of
her lineage, lets loose her howling cry
like her ancestors who fly in front of
rifle-bearing branch dodgers chasing squirrels,
birds, and rabbits. She doesn’t know that I—
though aware—have made her my baby girl
to join me on leather sofas where I
can look into her doleful eyes and flap
her long velvet ears. She gives up on her
rabbit, and I watch her wind and collapse
onto cushy good-enough, and I wonder
if her ache is like that rumbling unease
I feel—and what fretful blood pumps in me.