Do Rabbits Have Christmas?

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Buffy's Blog for Roundup.

We are snug together for the holiday weekend, reading and cooking and tending to other holiday joys like last-minute gifting and wrapping and visiting... and reading poetry, of course!

In that spirit I wanted to share with you DO RABBITS HAVE CHRISTMAS? by Aileen Fisher, illus. by Sarah Fox Davies.

Confession: I am not all that familiar with Aileen Fisher's work, and it was Charles Waters who said I must watch the video about her done by Lee Bennett Hopkins and Renee LaTulippe over at No Water River... so I did! I learned Aileen loved nature and did NOT love any sort of public life. I was happy to find her book DO RABBITS HAVE CHRISTMAS at my library, and I've got to say: she had me at that wonderful wonder-ing question of a title! The poem with the same title closes the book -- I will leave you to discover it. Meanwhile I'd like to share these two favorites, both of which (interestingly) have some sewing/garment analogies:

December

I like days
with a snow-white collar,
and nights when the moon
is a silver dollar,
and hills are filled
with eiderdown stuffing
and your breath makes smoke
like an engine puffing.

I like days
when feathers are snowing,
and all the eaves
have petticoats showing,
and the air is cold
and the wires are humming,
but you feel all warm . . .
with Christmas coming.

- Aileen Fisher


Snow Stitches

Who's the one
in winter's house
who likes to stitch and sew?

Around the meadow's
new white blouse
some dainty footprints go.

No, not a hare.
No not a grouse.
But just a plucky little Mouse. . .

That's the one
whose footprints show
like stitches in the new white snow.

- Aileen Fisher

Happy Holidays to all! Wishing each a rabbit-y winter. xo