When asked which creature might,
if it broke through the tar-dark window,
make the young boy break into fight or flight from fright
we thought he’d say bear, shark, a shock of ghosts from limbo.
To our surprise he builds with words
a vision more terrible: monster of abyssal blue,
bigger than a basketball hoop, undergirding
the skin of the sea, the worst he can construe:
Red-Flecked Monster, Flame-Foot, Horn
Toe, Macrocheira kaempferi, Spider King,
creaking across the wave-whipped ocean floor
of boys’ dreams, Jerusalem thorn singing
legs chattering with joy. What if, the boy
asks with holy wonder, he comes to love and to destroy?
by David Pitcher
David Pitcher is an Indiana poet who has been featured on The Poets Weave and whose work has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, Confluence, and elsewhere.
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