Poem: "Rabbit Season"

This is a Monster House poem for Easter.  (You can read the other Monster House poems on the "Serial Poetry" page of my website.) Sponsors so far: janetmiles, zianuray, kestrels_nest

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As I put the finishing touches
on my daughter's surprise,
I happened to glance out the window.

"Honey," I said to my wife, "did you know that
Harvey is hopping around our back yard?"

She dropped the box of cereal on the counter
and ran to the back door, waving madly
at the towering white rabbit.
"Hello!  Hello!   I haven't seen you in so long!"

"Orders, you know," the rabbit said genially
and tucked a lavender egg between the tulips.
"We're not allowed to deliver to households
after the children reach a certain age."
Another egg, striped in green and gold,
went behind a rock.  Then he asked,
"This time you're not going to try
putting a lace bonnet on me, are you?"

"Well," she said sheepishly,
"that was years ago."

"You don't actually have to do that,"
I said.  "We've bought a basket already."
I pointed at the purple plastic prize
sitting on the kitchen table,
filled with jelly beans and Peeps.

The Easter Bunny sneered at me
with three-inch incisors,
lifting a white wicker basket.
Inside it, a dark chocolate rabbit
crouched in a nest of candy grass.
It wiggled its ears against its pink marzipan ribbon,
clucked madly, and laid another candy egg.

"Never mind," I said. "I'll just go ...
take that one over to the neighbors' place."

A firm nod approved my offer.
"We don't go there," said the Easter Bunny.
Atheists, you know -- they don't believe in a one of us."

When I came back,
my wife was hugging her old friend goodbye.
"We'll see you next year!" she called as he hopped away.

We went indoors just in time
to hear girlish giggles from upstairs
and our daughter's eager footsteps on the treads.

"Just wait," my wife said with a nostalgic smile,
"until she finds out what's inside the eggs!"