Obedience, or The Lying Tale

...a pit of foxes
drunk on rotten brambles of berries,
and the raccoons ransack
a rabbit's unmasked hole.
What do they find but a winter's heap
of droppings? A stolen nest, the cracked shell

of another creature's child.
I imagine this is the rabbit way,
and I will not stray, Mother,
into the forest's thick,
where the trees meet the dark,
though I have known misgivings
of light...

Jennifer Chang
Poetry Daily
26.10.05