There is a story behind the cabinets.

When I was young enough to climb inside the smaller one

I would. I was no bigger then than the smaller

of two cabinets my granddad helped to lacquer

when he himself was not much bigger than I was.

Not much happened then, & then a lot of things, but none

of this is the story behind the cabinets. No one

told it to me. Instead they’d say,

‘there is a story behind these cabinets’

through the keyhole whose key was never found.

My granddad hunted rabbits by staging irresistible salads

on large, flat rocks, over-seasoned with pepper

so the rabbit’s inquisitive sniffing would make it sneeze

& launch its eggshell skull into the rock.

This is a thing that happened. The cabinets are almost

as beautiful as the trees they used to be,

or so I like to think having never seen them.

It must have killed my granddad’s granddad’s horse

to lug those trunks out from the forest, or so

I like to think. It must have crushed their little cart:

I picture the barrel-tops repurposed for its wheels popping off

like champagne corks. Everything was something,

once. The air inside the cabinet grew small

around me. In those years meat was scarce.