New
Mercies Unseen
by
Matthew Miller
I
Sometimes,
when harvesting the garden’s cabbage
or
kale, you notice a small cottontail cowering, cornered
within
the grapevine. Though you have no weapon,
he
does not trust your intention,
and
burrows out into the thorns.
II
In
a nest beneath blueberry stems, twisted and sparse
like
a hollowed out spaghetti squash,
a
kitten shivers,
born
naked and blind.
You
stop the spade well above his head,
slide
over to transplant strawberries. It’s mercy he never sees.
III
There
are sometimes, also, when you are sipping
dark
coffee at sunrise,
eyeing
the quiet rabbit.
He
nips grass nestled in the asphalt cracks.
Like
a mystic praying alone,
he
pulls sweet shoots from this rough road,
ears
up and head bowed low.
Bio:
Matthew Miller
teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry—all
hoping to create a home. He pretends his classroom at Bethany
Christian Schools is a living room, filling it with as many
garage-sale chairs as he can afford. He lives beside a dilapidating
apple orchard in Goshen, Indiana, and keeps trying to make tree
houses for his four boys in the broken branches. He vacillates
between wanting to poison and wanting to feed the groundhogs, rabbits
and cardinals that try to make their homes in the garden. For now,
they’ve all chosen peace.