The horror we call Lampman
prowls along a gravel road
where last spring’s anemones failed.
Forest crowds the dark. Houses
spaced a quarter mile apart
close as tightly as oysters
against his gray phosphorescence.
We’re not certain that he’s dead
but his fitful glow suggests
at least the notion of decay.
He walks this road every night
and no one challenges him.
As we pass in our car we imagine
he waves, but his glow occludes
his vestigial form and gestures.
He isn’t much. Hardly a presence.
But we mustn’t stop to talk.
We might become pillars of salt
the rain would erode and erase.
Lampman creeps from point to point,
never returning along this road.
Where does he go in daylight?
Is he present but unseen because
his glow is too vague to compete
with the honest November sun?
People blame him for the deaths
that frequent the nearby houses,
but cancer and old age apply.
No murders, no violent accidents,
no screams from vacant bedrooms,
no skulls grinning after midnight.
Lampman shuffles along the road
in his self-sparked illumination,
an idea of a person rather
than a soul on its own. When
we see him, we feel depleted
although he has never troubled us
except by exposing to starlight
a dream life we’d rather hide.
