The Jackalope

Jackalope image by Photobomb

THE JACKALOPE

In the cracked silence of desert,

where earth curls itself into dry, weathered lips,

the Jackalope prowls.

Not seen, but felt —

like the heat on a summer afternoon,

the shimmer that warps the horizon.

Not a beast, but a symbol—

of survival, of endurance,

of what happens when myth and landscape

fuse together to make something unforgettable,

something that lives forever in bone-deep silence.

A creature stitched together from the fur of the rabbit and bone of a buck,

a whisper of antlers rising from the dusty head

of a beast that never should have been.

It moves like a half-remembered dream, slipping between tall sagebrush 

and the bones of old cattle.

The settlers, thirsty for something beyond horizon,

spoke of it in low, guarded tones—

Ears and horns, the eyes too bright,

a myth cast in the shadow of hardship and sky.

The Jackalope was a wild thing,

too elusive, too odd, too tied to the land's strange blood and bruises.

It roams as both phantom and truth, woven into the sunburnt fabric of history,

not quite real, not quite gone.

It never stops running,

never stays long enough to be pinned down,

slipping in and out of time,

where history blurs

and the truth of the land is both wild and impossible.

The Jackalope is more than myth.

It is a ghost that haunts the desert, the creature that never existed,

but somehow always did.

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This cryptid mythology shared with those who are unbelievable over at DVerse Poets Pub.

©2025 Christopher Reilley 

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