Why I Call You Rabbit
(As you retrieve a volleyball from the trees)

Rabbit go lightly through my thoughts
As I dream tonight; and although I felt
Breakfast at Tiffany's was adequate,
I never really liked Holly that much:
Capote's wet-dream teenage blur.¹
I'd rather dream of a rabbit's fur.

Static blonde fur brushes against my cheek
Clinging in the cold, electric winter's night.
Quicksilver shocks flow like plasma currents
Arcing through my grasping hands.
Fingertips excite your platinum bangs
Sparking where they touch the moonlight.

And all my days, they pass through hands
Like clown fish swimming in the sea fans.
Unparalyzed, they dart past cruel anemones
Which grasp those weighted by duller thoughts.

Rabbit, dart into the green-waving, moon-silver trees.
Their leaves are swaying like kelp in a watery breeze,
But their bark rasps and burns me like fire coral.
Their thorns prick at me like urchins hiding in the rocks.

Of you, rabbit, the last thing I dream
I commit tonight to memory:
Your blonde, bob-cut hair
Leaps and floats with dramatic flair,
Bouncing like a beacon (or a will-o-wisp),
Disappearing (beckoning me) into the trees

(How like a bunny's tail, feathery white
Bobbing and bouncing like a fairy sprite
Flaunting its boundless liberty),
Signaling there, there might be a way for me.

That is why I think you are a rabbit;
And to follow you, I must go as you go:
Lightly each day through hands that grasp
And wave ahead of me like sinister anemones.
Rabbit, you bounce lightly tonight through thoughts like these,
A shining path, a beacon, a guide within my dreams.

¹Holly Golightly is the main character in Truman Capote's
"Breakfast At Tiffany's"

12/28/98