Lampman

 

 

 

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.