My Father’s Song

My father could whistle and did often 

I’d heard it differently then, the soft tune turned snare

I came down to his shop

where he stood, in caustic cold,

picking a hare’s entrails out of the tiller 

with eyes big and heavy and fair

His song 

reverberated off cracked concrete 

to ears of mine and what remained 

of the rabbit on silver tines 

He approached the form

aggressive and cold

He left it

silent, crooked, and barely breathing

I watched my father’s mouth move

to the shape a mother’s would

when she shushed her baby

His fingers plucked the meat hanging from splintered bone

I wondered to myself when his whistle began 

         when the hare’s quietus called for song 

My father’s song 

I dance to it

in times of grief 

and think on rabbits and tines