Member Poem

Beyond the Light

Your terrier’s wrathful racket

is aimed at a beast on the lawn

paused on its journey to dawn.

He longs to dash out and attack it.

Just look how the creature’s hind feet

sport thumbs like yours, while its tail

is as bare as a rat’s and as pale 

as birch. You’ve a ringside seat

to regard this ghost from Antares—  

and yet it is so much like you!

Is it merely moseying through

your garden to feast on the berries?

It creeps as it crept long ago

when this township was forest and glen, 

where outlines of foraging men

slunk through Luna’s glow.

Its rosy snout, sharp in shape 

and smell, is not nearly as keen

as the terrier’s. Pressed to the screen,

he watches the varmint escape

back to a realm all around you—

the realm of the owl and the bat,

the fox and the feral cat.

They enter your dreams and they hound you. 

But as shadows grow shy and retreat,

you forget those weird thumbs, the gray hair,

that white face and oracular stare,

till you spot one (dead?) in the street.