Rabbit

A rabbit on the grass is bounding away long before I can walk near them. The wild rabbits I see, with their fur a mix of brown and grey mostly just show white tails running away.

“Rabbit” is also a cockney word for rapidity of speech, flippant and sarcastic use of artfulness being part of the culture I love. And it makes for a good song; my sister loves playing Rabbit by Chaz and Dave on the holidays.

It’s close to how quick the little creatures move, they bound faster than a duet makes song-speech over one another.

It’s an affectionate byword for wild strength, going back to 2000s science fiction, Kelly-087 of the Halo series is affectionately called a rabbit, the symbol displayed on her armoured in the definitive edition Fall of Reach cover.

Anyone who has tried sitting with a dog on their lap, walked through a cloud of summer flies, or watched a rabbit in the grass already sees it running well before you’re a good 10 metres away. You see the white of the back of the tail, and small or large it’s moving. It’s gone by the time you register your sight fully. Gone before you adapt.

Febrile energy has to course through an animal. It is all want, drive, and instinct at once. If that dog hears a rap at the door, or even a stranger approach, you cannot keep it in place.

As the most aware and conscious beings on our planet, why do we not employ that speed? Our cognition is directed at work, at patience. We endure societal indignities, social niceties, and chart our lives often by years or decades.

To plan is not to act. To sit it out is an act of neglecting the life, speed, and success of that rabbit as it bounds past in the morning.

Nature is around us, outside of us on a vast scale, and we populate these electronic forums and data exchange centres constantly of natural sights and places to travel.

But it’s the wild we need to reconcile to have the kind of existence most of us yearn for, that many pretend to have, but few can truly call their own.

Part of an animal’s majesty is it is all moment, thinking as much as it moves, always in a state we invent words and terms for and find ecstatic to be and remember fondly.

I enjoy the beauty of the rabbit. I envy its speed. But without thinking, what I want is that fleetness of foot and that energy at will as a similar mammal with my own life to live.