Sean Lause

The wolf as original dreamer

The earth would burst incandescent
they said, but I was prepared
with an army of dreams and magic
and each night a thousand stars
descended from the ceiling like cobalt spiders
to weave my bed of innocence.

The fall came when my father placed a book
of Peter and the Wolf before the mirror.
I could not stop watching the wolf,
its lava eyes spilling rage and violation,
teeth swirling in a snarl of white death,
its feet clawing for the earth to return.

Above, Peter clung to the tree branch
faceless, like all sadists,
tightening his noose over its tail
to suspend it through eternity,
and to make the torture exquisite,
he made music from its misery.

Tonight, alone in bed,
my wife dying, son grown and gone,
the wolf leaps from a shadow in my dream,
folds itself around me, shredded tail bleeding.
I sing gently to it,
sharing the hunger still hovering in the air.

______

Sean Lause teaches composition and speech, and a course on the Holocaust, at Rhodes State College, in Ohio.  He has published fiction and criticism as well as poetry.