Elmer (Be)Fudd(led)

a squat chap, squinting and balding with rifle in hand,

trudged like a chunky spud on two legs

through oozing mudflats from garden to garden in dark of night,

hunting a long-eared crop stealing thief, a scoundrel

who burrows and hops with skin like Teflon, leaving the lone runt

downcast, bereaved, fatigued and forlorn, bewildered, befuddled,

beaten down, but not beguiled one bit

by the drip drip drip of daily annoyances and this no-account nit-picking

neighbor of nuisance, Fudd found some small shred of solace

in browbeating and besmirching, essentially buggering ‘Bugs’ good,

the wascally wabbit whose gray fuzzy nose was forever nestled

in deep fertile dirt and moved through fenced plots of earth

like a greedy speed reader librarians love or a semi-truck driver

roaring down Route 87 on another kind of speed, sniffing and snorting

the yellow-orange high in vitamin A good for your eyes,

(for a fresh crunchy one he’d give you his hare shirt)

this garden variety cocaine commonly called carrots.

Living low, close to ground zero, made Elmer feel bugged,

envious of taller heroes, a low grumble in his mind droned

constantly on like a sticky second hand smoke which stunk up his house,

and forever trying to ignore his thirsty third wife with her porky smooth skin

her bark less than her bite, like a stumbling drunk with yellowed fingers

that grip for dear life a wobbly barstool, our woozy Elmer onward chagrined.

One windy moonless eve on his wayward walk home after several or more

tonics and gin, he met his nemesis the rabbit down on the curb, and heard

how the carrot crop had withered and vanished from an unusual late frost.

Elmer’s enemy looked almost human in that rare moment of straight honest talk

causing an upsurge of compassion throughout his frame of three feet

and with no further ado into Fudd’s cottage did the two hop  

for a post-midnight snack of barley and cabbage and a frosty cold one,

from that moment on Mr. Fudd still stubby and unsober, but for once

un-befuddled, found a true blue unsoiled agape in his tipsy epiphany,

this unspoiled love of a thieving, orange eyed, carrot-gluttonous rabbit.

He might soon leave his quarrelsome pink skinned honey

for this new pal Bugs Bunny.

Please give it a whirl dear reader, what’s your best guess?