Tilting Moon Fate
Lone rabbit on the far blue slope, tuned to the vast darkening. Tilt-shy, unlike the others who leap upon their shadows. Dark tears the birch bark, betulin skin ruptured, the pioneering done. Brush and scrub advance; seedlings, saplings, too, making their way north under the cover of snow, seen only by the piercing moon who summons the southern forests. Take again this blue north, from the rabbits who nature-fade the pioneers then dance upon the ruins.
Silent battle, if it weren’t for the rhythm of rabbits on their death shades. Trying to outrun the underland mirrors pressing snow into shadow, but meeting them again and again, pounding the patient seeds below. In the marble brush tilt of moonlight, branches reach for rabbits. The pioneers bend themselves for the catch, for when the rabbits have run their rings widdershins and lost their wits to frenzy.
Only the lone rabbit can resist its moon fate by welcoming the night, the call to shed its white coat and greet the underland echo, its hidden twin. The twin is climbing to the surface on birch roots as pale above as below. The roots fight on two fronts, with rabbits surface-bouncing, beating down yet drum-summoning the twin threaded with hyphae. Under the snow skin, the tilted twin waits for the pioneers to scalp and pelt the others in tribute to the moon. Whipping birch, white pelts; the lone rabbit darkens to twin.