April is National Poetry Month, and to mark the occasion we'll be sharing some of our favourite poems from collections we've published over the years. Today's poem is "Sleeping outside the Kelowna bus station" by Matthew Walsh from the collection These are not the potatoes of my youth.

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 "Sleeping outside the Kelowna bus station"
by Matthew Walsh

 I woke to a small brown rabbit behind a blade
of grass. He was completely confused.

Shouldn’t I be making pancakes on the moon? Did I not
have another place to be? But I had not gone

and his friends looked at me like I was a person
who would just invite himself

to their party. My grandfather hated rabbits
but I didn’t share that with him.

I tried to sleep but I felt his whiskers on my face.
I had never kissed a rabbit before.

My grandmother once ate rabbit brains
fried in Becel with thirty percent less salt.

I prayed this would not come up. How could
I rationalize that? I wanted to hold him so badly.

He had been sweet to me though belonged elsewhere
with someone else. He licked water

from grass and his friends were so great. I’d get him
a ticket in the morning to come with me

but he could not leave. He was the only one
who could get the TV to come in.

He knew I had to return to the moon. He had no time
or love, for I was a space cadet.

Grab your own copy of These are not the potatoes of my youth by Matthew Walsh here, or check out the rest of our poetry collection here.