October 17: Cross and Garlic, Mark Doty, "The Owner of the Night"

Yesterday, it was a zombie apocalypse.  Today, it's a vampire.  Sort of. 

I grew up watching horror movies.  When I was a kid, I would go to the library, into the adult section, and read all the books I could about vampires and werewolves and ghosts and demons.  I read William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist when I was in fourth grade.  I'm not joking.

So this kind of material appeals to me on a deep level.  I enjoy the jump and scare, as long as it doesn't involve clowns.  And vampires are some of my favorite creatures of the night.

Saint Marty always carries his cross and garlic.  Just in case.

The Owner of the Night

by:  Mark Doty

interrogates whoever walks
this shadow-lane, this hour
not reserved for you: who

are you to enter it?
Orion’s head over heels
above the road, jewel-belt

flinting starlight
to fuel two eyes looking
down from the air:

beacons in reverse,
since light pours in
toward her appetite

until she wings her noiseless outline
between our rooftop and the stars,
over this door and all the doors

hidden in the grass:
dreaming voles,

firefly province,

wasps in the palace
they’ve hollowed under the hill.

Mole resting his face against his splayed hands.

Perch, blink. Pose
the evening’s question
to the sleepless

while the moon if there is one
scatters islands
on a field of ink. Who

maps this? The owner
of the night looks down
to mirror and admit the hours

before the upper vaults
begin to lighten and recede.
Did you hear what I said,

a face looks down from the night?
Did who hear me? Who
reads this page, who writes it?