​Then
 
 
The Easter Bunny died in the back of a pickup truck
where my brother and I had ridden with the groceries.
At seven, I didn’t want to know what I suspected,
and at five, my brother was already leaning toward iconoclast,
so when I found the cellophaned baskets sitting in a brown paper bag,
as if they were just like anything else bought at the Kroger’s,
and the logic I’d been dodging came stomping, and Sainty
and the Tooth Fairy went the way of the Bunny all in one big myth-death,
I cried.
 
Decidedly, my brother didn’t blink.
 
But of none that happened until we were back on the mountain
and had stopped in front of the house.
 
When we were riding, when my brother and I sat close,
​leaning against the side wall of the truck bed, and we flew
down the snaky two-lane through the tree-liquored air,
and the cliff rocks kept looming up like a chain of Godzillas,
and we laughed at them in fright-joy
and gave our laughter to the thrill-wake of the wind,
then the real alchemy came,
joining sceptic and romantic in a hare-leap of wonder.