Between Cars

Zebulon Huset

Like a punch-drunk boxer, the rabbit
that darted with reckless abandon
from Home Depot’s overgrown bushes
far too late in the day to safely cross
four lanes, maintained its feet after
its head conked the Civic’s axel.

I was a lane over ignoring a phone
buzzing in my pocket as my foot
left the gas and my focus left the bumper
a couple car-lengths ahead, eyes wide,
brain conjuring sudden prayers
for the fluffball between speeding cars.

I didn’t see if its wits returned
quickly enough to retreat
into the undergrowth. Traffic
and its dozens of vehicles hurtling forward
on one unhinged hurry or another
had no care for the small life in jeopardy.

It had missed the Honda’s tires,
a small blessing that might not
have been repeated once my vision
returned to the many tons of metal
and plastic and rubber that seemingly
constantly endangered my life.

However long that lupine
lived in the ‘real world’ so filled
with and divorced from abstractions—
its lifespan of maybe a decade would fall
far short of the nights I’d eye popcorn
ceilings, wondering if he’d made
the shoulder as I rushed to somewhere
completely unimportant in such a hurry.

---

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer, and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest, and his writing has appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Atlanta Review, Texas Review, and many others. He publishes the writing blog Notebooking Daily, edits the journal Coastal Shelf, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.