Whatever looking allows

Something Wants In

The pressure changes in the house. Open one
door and the rooms rush out. A mindful window
and the wind whimpers for hours at your inequal
ears. A lone black cricket basks beneath a hallway
nightlight still as a sleeping stone. I step around her
so as not to rouse, careful to douse no shadow.

I pass and think. Weather sends its ghosts to try
the doors and I come to blow ink across open
paper. This is an old arrangement. The invisible
things of this world want in and regularly let it
be known they will not be kept out or made to
prove they are worthy of your ignoring them.



Persistence claims its converts. I can hardly keep
my eyes set to task as the weight of hemispheric
night exacts its deep devotions. I rest them be-
tween lines that reappear each time I reopen them.
The hand knows no other master and so waits at
the gate to inscribe whatever looking allows.

Faithful dumb hand. Something else wants in.
A house holds too many points of compromise.
Night requires not one of them and enters un-
challenged. Again, the pressure changes. Every-
thing wants in now. The invisible will have its visit.
Sleep is a hallway cricket still as black stone. Unseen,
I leave the deep house through a disappearing window.

Joseph Gallo
November 8, 2008