Squatter
Only a small newt
inhabits the crawl space under my house.
I don’t get down there often
but when I’m forced to open the hatch
and duck-walk the distance to the sump,
the newt stands perfectly still
protecting its ground,
meditating on some damp and inner darkness.
Touch the tail and it scurries
a few indignant steps, but stays.
All day my feet upstairs
drum against the hardwood floor.
I am always the neighbor at the door
who tries the knob before knocking.
1 comments:
ugh. Just lost all my comments. Sigh. When will i learn to copy everything before i try to hit send.
so.
I love the title, all its inferences. And the metonymy in this poem is fantastic--the newt as tail, the human as footstep. That is a wonderful leap, to see the self as sound.
Which gets reinforced in the end ... the sound of the knob being rattled.
And what an image of the self, to know it as it is known by crawlspace newt.
Also love that central mediation on damp and inner darkness.
And that violation of space, that last stanza is just the right amount of disturbing.
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