Until the Light Fades
There was so much blood on the grass,
it drowned out the smell of the lilacs
but, somehow, not the goldenrod.
No vampire would have made such a mess.
Yet not messy enough for a werewolf’s play.
Such are the things we count as luck these days.
Tracking the creature beneath the sliver moon;
a moving still-life in flashlights and frightened dogs
that would gladly run the other way
if not for the one old bloodhound
who has been on so many of these hunts,
the ghoulies fear him.
Too bad they don’t fear us
Nervous hunters trudge by a cemetery.
Not one of the old ones — too many still
unpacified — but one of the ones from
the early days, when we buried the fallen
in trenches lined up as neatly as possible
in the hurry to be done before nightfall.
But the devil dark where those memories live
is held at bay for a time — the time of hunting
(Rescuing? Can we have a rescue just this one time?)
hunting for hate borne on blood-soaked talons.
At least this one doesn’t seem to have wings.
When it happened, Hell shambled to war piecemeal.
First, just a few dark and hungry things appeared,
skulking in the shadows, feeding in the alleyways,
without even the courtesy of heavenly trump
to warn that the end was half past nigh.
How many thermonuclear weapons does it take
to stuff the boogie man back into his bottle?
Or back into the rafters, the shadows, the cobwebs,
the mausoleums they crawled out of. Too close.
They seemed to be everywhere — More like
a disease or an ideology than a mere enemy.
It can happen even in the best of families
There are hunts and there are hunts
and there are long tiring nights of shuffling
on half-seen paths and crumbling old-world roads
no one has taken since the cities died in fits
and fires and house to house to corner market to
Last Stand Diner skirmishes and all night fights.
Our children don’t remember when there was nothing
for humans to fear but each other, back before you
learned to take better care of your weapons than you
ever did of your car, before life was measured
in moments survived and hunting and killing monsters
became the treasured lore that keeps us civilized.
Remember, it isn’t revenge if you still have hope
Most nights the hunters go home empty handed.
Other times, there come a sudden scrabbling,
a breathy shout, and a stench of rotten meat and
too fresh blood as, goaded by the unseen dawn,
a ghoul brings the war to life again, or to
something like life, just for a moment.
We used to use bait. The craving to
desecrate an old cross on a little chain,
would drive even the cleverest of the things
out of hiding and into our crosshairs.
But they took the bait too often,
until we prayed they wouldn’t anymore.
Then you can hear the dew scattering
from your feet before the sunrise,
that blessed border beyond which
the enemy sleeps and dogs and men
turn toward home for well-earned triage
and a civilized breakfast.
You can tell the difference
between the living and the dead
by the way they eat their meat.
