Poetry for Yellow Tulip and The Flat Rabbit

Sherlock Struthers Solves

The Mystery of the Missing Rabbit and the Rabbit Poem (1992)

 By Ann Struthers

White Rabbit in the Snow was anchored in earth

beside the metal sculpture, Yellow Tulip,

but prankster, pledge, or art lover purloined

it.  To mark the rabbit's loss, tell its worth

Neal Bowers penned a poem.  Lynn Pohlman hired

it engraved on bronze to mark the place and joined

it to concrete, but strong thieves pried it loose.

Ag students are suspected for their lack

of reverence, decorum, their prolonged

campus high jinks, but rumors hint at much worse.

Some blame the native brown rabbits.  Did they tear

apart the stoney one, traitor to their kind?

Or whispers say monstrous swine escaped their berths

and killed it?  Or that Old Reactor's spent waste

nuked the beast, burned the poem?  I enjoin

the gossips.  Here's the truth:  For the sheer mirth

of it:  Tulip, leaves like knives, its blossom fork,

consumed them both on dark nights and LEFT NO SIGN.

Art Thief (1992)

 By Neal Bowers

All art defines itself

by what's left out:

the city in Gauguin's paradise,

corners in Henry Moore.

Think of Renoir's vase

filled with chrysanthemums,

how the room has disappeared,

the tabletop itself barely a suggestion.

My technique perfects such absences.

It's what astonishes:

the empty hook, the blank place

on the wall, the vacant pedestal.

I leave behind the plaque

to name the space,

the pure ideal you wanted

all along but didn't realize,

and lumber into darkness

with a load of imperfections

heavy on my back.

No need to thank me.