Passing Calvary Cemetery
by Hal Johnson

Runestone, volume 10

The effort it took to rescue the thing
trapped between the fence and the ground–
the stiff, bloodless back half of a rabbit,
from the dogs butting up against me
wanting it only because they couldn’t have it

only because I was taking it away
and not because they wanted the dried out
maggot meat that clung to the creature–
the effort was not worth the prize of a mangled corpse
and the spirit that overcomes me here,

the ghost of that half-rabbit that declares
the chain link fence my enemy, the victim
of a donkey kick that bullies it into rattling,
stuttering out a protest to my abuses
and my disruption of this place of resting

that only continues as I walk, kick again,
then find myself grappling with the fence
shaking sense into it, howling in the same key
as the dogs fighting to rip that rabbit from my hands
and growling in the same frequency

of it hitting the bottom of the dumpster
and the rage is just as brief as the time it took to land
to consider the uncomfortably dead thing
and to return to the house to wash my hands.