White Rabbit

It will never appear

in the retro candy store

among 5th Avenue bars

and Now and Laters

evoking both absence

and presence.

Yet it made many cameos

in the past, at the homes

of certain friends, the ones

with connections.

Like Botan Rice Candy

but packed with no toy,

it gestured to insiders:

eat the clear wrapper.

Inconspicuous

in a lunchbox,

it still got noticed

but with less coldness

than greeted haw flakes.

Who could mistake

sweet milk and vanilla

for a foreign invader?

Assimilation

should have been an option

for White Rabbit,

its artist’s palette

as inexplicable

as the comic strip

in Bazooka gum,

but it gained no traction

except at the margins

where suspicion

failed to flourish,

the obvious purpose

being sugar,

its three characters —

big    white    rabbit  —

bearing no implicit

Communist leaning.

At New Year gatherings

big bowls of them

invited everyone

to acknowledge their rarity

outside the festivities

but meanwhile take handfuls

as if they were plentiful.