Hungry Eyes Feasting

Quite often the art which accompanies my "Chosen Words" entry doesn't directly reflect the poem or the commentary.

But I thought today's photo, one of my "foggy mornings" collection, was fitting. It has a certain mysterious quality about it ... an eerie feeling that ... well, something is about to happen.

I don't want to frighten anybody, but I do want to set the stage for the suspense which the poem may convey. I'm looking at the photo now, trying to remember exactly where and when it was taken, but that apparently has gotten lost in my own early morning fog.

Let's just say that I snapped it while out on one of my morning walks, camera always ready, sketchpad in the small backpack that I sometimes lug along.

As to the poem: Here we go again, eh? Maybe it's my age ... or maybe it's just that I feel certain poems ... like a snatch of a favorite tune ... or a favorite phrase ... can bear repeating.

Sometimes repetition doesn't hurt ... it may even help ... like a second glimpse of something, in which you see some detail you missed before.

But enough of alibis.

This is one of my dream poems. No, I'm not saying it approaches perfection ... not in any respect. It's a poem about one of my dreams.

It seemed so real to me because it took place in familiar surroundings, much of it in my home neighborhood. The familiar went streaming through my sleep, in one of those dreams which seems to go forever.

I thought it would never end ... especially when it took the mysterious, sinister overtones of my feeling that, although I was on a deserted street, I was being watched.

Usually I wake up, the dream bubble bursts, and that's that.

Not this time.

I reached immediately for that pad and pen which are always nearby, just in case. I'm glad I put down some of those images before they got away from me.

This poem went on to become published in Waterways:

HUNGRY EYES FEASTING

Awash in the buzz and crackle wafting from

The Hillside Tavern’s enchanted neon signs,

I wake to the sound of nothing in my room,

Find the aching cold of yesterday's shoes,

Then, exploring the hall's echoing darkness,

Hear the ticking clock, the click of the lock

Before I go strolling past houses haunted

By the absence of dreams, empty windows

Staring back, thousands of broken promises

That will not be mended - not this night;

Slowly I march to the song of something

I can almost hear, feel its hungry eyes

Feasting on me, sense its crouching, tensing,

Preparing to pounce, and I dare not scream.

© 2005

***

Today's word: feasting

Afterthoughts ... in response to your comments:

Ooooooo ... You're right, Kelly ... it does sound like Halloween. I hadn't thought of that when I wrote it, but it does, now that you mention it. Another example of the reader providing a new dimension to a piece of writing. And I thank you.