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.