Two weeks ago today, I walked home with a dying rabbit in my arms. My mother, who taught me to love poetry, sent me this most appropriate Pablo Neruda poem as a reminder of both that heartbreak and the all-too-frequent apathy of others. As I walked home with the bunny cradled against my shirt, many people passed, glanced at what was in my arms, and moved on, unconcerned or embarrassed.
Ode to the Boy with the Hare
On the high road
in the autumn light
a boy
held in his hands
not a flower
or a lantern
but a dead hare.
Automobiles striped
the cold roadway,
through their windshields
stared
unseeing faces
iron
eyes,
alien
ears
teeth
quickly glimpsed
lightning flashing
toward sea and cities.
and the autumn boy
with his hare,
chary
as a thistle
hard as a pebble,
standing there
raising
one hand
to the travelers’
exhalations.
No one
stopped.
Dark stood the
cordilleras,
the hills were
the hue of a puma
pursued,
lavender
lay
the silence
like
two
black diamond
coals
gleamed
the eyes
of the boy with the hare,
tips of two
upraised blades,
two black knife points
were the eyes
of the boy
lost there
offering his hare
in the autumn
immensity of the road.