Midnight Marauder

By John I. Blair

The cat on the countertop
Lashes his tail
And stares sharply out the window.

Something’s there in the dark,
Something that moves and stops
And moves again.

At midnight
Notions that the noon sun
With its fierce examination

Would destroy
Float up from between
The wet rocks and lushly clustered ferns

Around my birdbath,
From the slug-slimed paths
In my gloomy garden.

Grendel, and his mother,
Seem plausible once more,
As plausible they must have been

To mist-bound northmen
Barricaded in their dim
And wood-built mead halls.

©2004 John I. Blair