De Arte Venandi

I sit reclining in a hunting blind,
in one hand a mug of coffee and
in the other a .22 BIC ballpoint rimfire.

A brush rabbit darts out into sight,
could be a sonnet, to judge by the size.
But you never really know until its dead.

It certainly isn’t dead now. Even as it startles
and holds still there is no mistaking that.
Watching transfixed, I commit panicked breaths to memory.

And I sigh and uncap my pen, not wanting to outwait the moment.
This is after all a closed ecosystem. No one else can visit,
and nothing living leaves.

Determined to share my findings, I take the shot.
And I’ll spare you the grammar and gristle, skinning and scrawling,
but you can see what I ended up with.

You’ll never see how it loped through the grass,
or the fox it could have fed, but maybe you can still see
something in the glass eyes I picked out with such care.