City Rabbit

Coming up the stairs
from the underground,
I take my usual route:
turn left into
the oil-stained alley,
walking beside
the greasey dumpsters
and over the shining glass shards.

Something soft and brown
moves near the edge of a dumpster.
A young rabbit,
wide-eyed, looks at me,
quivering, alert.

The rabbit turns and runs,
ducking in between the grease caddy
from Sabor Latino
and the liquor store dumpster
where cardboard boxes,
empty and cut open,
spill over the top.

Hastening, I circle the
big metal boxes
looking for the vanished rabbit.
I think of Alice,
suddenly confronted
by the March Hare.
Here in August
in the fetid city,
I’ve lost the rabbit.