THE APPARITIONERS

By my daughter’s bedside light I read
myself into fear, though I am her protector. 
A schoolmate died—a boy, the cause unclear.
Thinking to provide comfort to the class
the teacher made a tale of it, where angels
hovered down to steal him while he slept.
Now parents across town keep vigilant
until our children rest, come running when
they wake to find themselves abandoned
to their common nightmare, the thrum of wings.

Can reading up on horror summon it?
My book describes a man, trapped in debt
and made sick by God, who killed his own—
mother, wife, three children—left his church a note,
then disappeared.  Our suburban Eden’s
Hell for some; my ex-wife knew a woman
who cut her throat while watching in the glass,
as if death unwitnessed would go ignored.
We groom the wilderness to demark space,
the border you don’t want to violate. 

Yet some trespass without fear: cats step light
from lawn to lawn, never looking down.
At night our dreams glow white as negatives
where shadows mass into a door through which
the gone return, to wander restlessly
like shoppers in a mall they can’t afford.
We frighten children with our fantasies;
when one coheres we abdicate the watch,
leave our nightmare to the kids—or them to it.
Our no-man’s land is its dominion.

So when one child cries at night, the others
echo, like dogs announcing an intruder.
Their parents’ lights click on to ease the dark;
next day we greet each other at the train,
or downtown running errands—rheumy-eyed
survivors wired on coffee, cigarettes.
When my daughter wakes, asking for her mom,
I tell her she’s not with us anymore.
Who’s she with?  I don’t know—she disappeared.
On that she sleeps and I take up my book.

A wind arrives to scour the yard’s few trees.
Branch tips snap, deep roots pop as if rough hands
gripped to yank them from their anchorage.
Here we are safe—my book’s no conjure thing,
my daughter sleeps untroubled by its spell,
her animals arrayed to guard the bed.
But in another home, the angels’ stealth
won’t be resisted: a child awakens
fevered in the dark, his parents gone, to know
a bristling wing placed frankly on his brow.