The journey

Inside the house grew dark, darker than the spectral dusk. I lit the lamp and then went out into a merging sky and earth. The autumn grass had lost its spunk, pliant, wan, took on the sheen of reams of clouds which, wintering, were wild and very luminous; the autumn garden and the field were merging too. Leeks' splayed leaves from thickening stalks still grew like drooping ears near upright beets, dense row of chard; remnants of the chicken fence, dissolving band of rusting lace loosened from its leaning posts, no longer kept the cultivated space separate from the softening grass which in September, left unchecked, had come boldly marching in. A thrashing, I heard a thrashing in the air. All natural shapes were still, dimming grass, diverging sky, I followed the metallic band of fence and found the source, a rabbit caught in buckling twists of wire; on its side, its fur showed hues of blending land and sky lost to undiscerning eye but for its thrashing, its unuttered cry. I bent down to it. I longed to touch its beating heart, its rabbit's foot, soft fluff, hard limb and claw. I thought I'd rescue it and take it in, and yet with an untwisting of the wire, I set it free. Thin bounding thing, sliver of shadow, hair and light, running over tawny dappled grass into darkening olive night.