Speed Walking on August 31, 2013

Nothing much to report this morning
as if anyone were waiting to hear,
putting the day on hold like,

just a few women jogging by,
girls with their eyes lowered,
and a few men, their awkward hellos.

The squirrels don’t really count
because of their ubiquity,
but there was the one brown rabbit

frozen up ahead on the cinder path,
immobile as a painting of a brown rabbit,
so I stopped and tried to be

as still as a pencil drawing of a man,
and maybe a half a minute passed
before he bounced himself into the weeds.

Was that you Seamus,
coming to pay me a little visit?
Who else could it possibly be?

I asked with confidence.
Not Robert Penn Warren surely.
No, only you with your eye still bright.

~ Billy Collins