There’s a rabbit, 
not Peter, who visits 
my vegetable patch, 

a gangland garden 
of my clan that pays
a lease to the Earth.

And I should refuse 
the rabbit, not Peter, 
my hard-grown cabbages.

A stomping, swearing, 
shooting Mafioso 
of the poor clay soil 

my role, locked in debt 
like a crazy gambling 
Cortez, driven to 

exterminate—
but what is a spoiled 
cabbage or two, 

that can be saved 
for eating by the chop 
of a knife: coleslaw 

for the dinner table;
a dewy morning feed 
for the rabbit, not Peter. 

And it’s that way
that I sometimes have 
the heart to refuse.