In the winter, the bunnies here are fragile and sharp-ribbed,

huffing like clouds berated by the summer’s old sun

We are plump and silvery with our mother’s pollock, 

treating this little journey like infinity exists,

slipping quickly under the picket fence, 

yanking long pink milkweed into

our own growing stems.

We hear that the bad smell is from the ginkgo trees,

but it’s only the stench of wriggling bodies

Bowing to the cattails, marching by wind-blown reeds,

We are soldiers brandishing knives 

We don’t even notice when the ferryman beckons his oar 

We don’t know how to refuse 

Our bruises and laughs are pressed thanklessly into loam

and the cedar is weeping our echos out in amber resin,

Frosted-pink palms stuck and slow like

drowned flowers

The ginkgos smell of becoming and decay,

We run furiously because the two

Move as one

He grabs me by the elbow and whispers 

something so close that his whiskers

Graze my ear

He tells me that one option implies the other,

writing wrinkles into my skin like an old poem

The skiff cradles me in its bow,

the bunnies chasing us all the way down.