Jack Rabbit

It was morning. Whilst lying in bed,
I had not a dream, but a vision, instead.
There was a jack rabbit, hovering over a line,
And below him was a triangular precipice;
And hung over him was a dark cloud;
In the foreground, a round boulder.

The scene was slowly changing, as it then became
A large question mark rotating in its own space.
I was in an alpha state, as the thoughts processed.
I wondered how long this art could hang there,
How strong the fiber of silk was to balance it.

With gentle suspension, as it gestured clockwise.
The mobile was really a cache of dried leaves,
Arranged closely together, like a cluster.
It dangled from a long spider web,
That Mother Nature must have mustered,
On a light bulb in the middle of the window box.

Rod thought I had made it, and hung it there.
I said, “No, look closely.” And he did.
“You should film this, because it’s floating in mid-air.”

The next morning I looked at it again…
The mobile had morphed into the shape of a caterpillar,
Sitting atop a mushroom, and yet was still a question mark.
“Who Are You?” from Alice in Wonderland, I thought…)

But I knew what it all truly meant. It was all symbolic.
The life of my dearest friend, Jack, was hanging by a thread.
The line was his path and its nature, segmented.
The triangular precipice below him
Was the balast of his Body, Mind, and Soul.

The dark cloud; his emotional state.
The ground in the fore, heavy and bold.
Finally, the caterpillar is Jack’s metamorphosis.

The Question that dangles, fragile with dry humor,
Leaves us wondering, and yet also, illuminated…
Life returns transmogrified, and this circle is forever,
Slowly turning in the gentle web of  November wind,
A butterfly waits to fly once again into its remembering.

Johnathon Gallagher         written November 17, 2011