#444 Backstory of the poem “When the Cottontail Doesn’t Return” from SALVAGE LIST by Chera Hammons published by Belle Point Press on June 17, 2025
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? I remember caring for the orphaned cottontail kit in the poem and thinking, while I was holding it close, how strange it was that it would be afraid of me someday. My mom raised orphaned cottontails many times when I was little, and they always got so wild when they were ready to be released, no matter how tame they’d been before. Their wildness was immutable. So that was the point I realized later that I wanted to get to, and the rest was just telling the story.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. A poem always starts in my head when I’m doing something far from paper or a computer. I was in the garage mixing horse feed a day or two after the events in the poem, thinking over them, when the poem began. So there was a line of blue and green plastic feed bins in a line in front of me on a dusty concrete floor, and bags of timothy hay pellets and loose salt and California Trace and things slumped off to the side. And I had to hold the idea until I could finish what I was doing and get inside and jot it down.
But most of the actual writing happens on a desktop PC in my home office. It sits on a dark brown midcentury-knockoff desk surrounded by green and white monsteras on one side and flanked by a tall white bookshelf on the other. My desk is always a mess, where stacks of books and papers abound, and there are Post-it notes galore.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? I wrote the first draft in May 2020, during the lockdowns. So there was a lot of fear and uncertainty swirling around in the world.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? I don’t remember any lines that were deleted, but I can tell you the first draft of the poem ended at the word “live.” I added the last two lines later because it didn’t feel finished with the original ending. Those last two lines ended up pulling a lot of weight.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? That the world is full of miraculous and contradictory events. And all living things all connected to each other. I hope it’s a reminder not to take things for granted.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The hardest lines, which still make my heart fall when I read them, were the ones that say:
“The kit I take from the dog
that has discovered the nest suffers. I tell my husband
it would be quicker to let the dog keep it.
By quicker, I mean the measure of the young heart’s hurt.”
Because sometimes you just walk into a situation where there are just no good choices. You can only try to do what seems right, and hope for the best. I hate being in that place, and I hate it when an animal is hurting. I want everything to be okay. I want happy endings.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? I am grateful that this poem was initially published in The Southern Review, and then reprinted by Verse Daily.
When the Cottontail Doesn’t Return
In a fur-lined nest under wreaths of lamb’s ears,
an unmoving rabbit kit shrinks into bone,
having given up hours ago. The kit I take from the dog
that has discovered the nest suffers. I tell my husband
it would be quicker to let the dog keep it.
By quicker, I mean the measure of the young heart’s hurt.
I don’t mean to sound so harsh.
The kit I find huddled against the house,
eyes sealed shut, trembling, might yet be saved.
Tell me what sort of world this is:
to move into light for the first time
and find it contains the devouring mouth.
Not knowing that there can ever be more than this.
Then the strange, unsteady lift, the glass dropper
of unfamiliar milk pressed against the gums,
the voice, like those it will fear one day, saying “Live.”
And again I ask: “What could this mean?”
And hope the answer is something remarkable.
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