Sometimes There is Poetry

For Bob

I can't sleep at night
for all the pawing by the wolf at the door.
It's been going on for some time--
most nights his howl stalks me,
and I run badly as if starring in a B horror film,
fleeing from chamber to chamber in my mind.

My eyes flip open,
the coins fly off my lids.
I feel it before I see it--
the yellow glare under the door
that slips like cartoon smoke across the floor,
at a right angle up the bed and into my pillowed ear.

And so it goes,
as the wise Mr. Vonnegut said.
Even so, knowing this, sometimes I wake up dead--
the wolf having broken through,
gnawing a vein that then floods the room,
leaving a pool of DNA, just in case I have a second coming.

But, now and then,
there is poetry.
A man at my door brings it to me--
offering alms for my soul,
pouring words and metaphors into my veins,
softly binding my wounds with mistletoe and rye.

He stands in the doorway,
his head cocked to the right,
a Godly smile across the lines of his face--
he recites poetry about the blue child,
and oh Suzanna's waist, some catfish lovin'
and coffee served by a left-handed woman, oh damn!

Sometimes he sits
in the chair by my books,
a man who lives by words, the Word--
and his wife brings me pictures of purple flowers.
On the very best of days, there is a little
soft shoe, along with the poetry, right there in the hall.