Rabbit

"You could write a poem about rabbitbrush,
And relate it back to that strange first time
You saw it, in Boulder, this time of year,
When you asked the locals what that yellow
Flower was, lining the roads," says Sarah.

I could. It's October again, some years
After I was lonely and free enough
To drive for a week around south Utah
With nobody noticing I was gone.
All that beauty and self-pity haunts me still.

But what would I say now, married father
Of this ten-month old playing in the dirt
Under a juniper by the loud creek
Cutting through rabbitbrush and watered fields
Of the farms of Seventh-Day Adventists

Hiding out here, living here, just like me,
Just like the earlier Mormon ranchers,
And, I suspect, just like the earliest
Hunter-gatherers meandering here
In pursuit of big game, bigger game, home?