Thoughts On A Critic
Who Hated Anthropomorphic Poetry

Maria Nutick

Perhaps you were a skinny little boy,
alone in your first big bed,
when the moon peered in your window with a cold eye,
the wind shrieked your name under the eaves,
and the witchy maple clawed at the pane,
“let me in, let me in.”
Maybe you hid beneath the covers
and told yourself over and over
“Mama says it’s just the wind. Mama says there ain’t no witches.”
Perhaps as a teenager
you watched the lunar landing, and smiled–
“It’s only a big rock.”
Perhaps you are a rational man,
a man of science, a realistic man;
perhaps you see only orbiting satellite
and changing air currents
and chlorophyll.
Perhaps you live in a white house in the suburbs
with a manicured lawn and carefully pruned shrubbery
and no sap-supple fingers clutch at your sill–
but there’s that moon again.
Quick, close your eyes!
Maybe she won’t see you.

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Illustration by Kimberlee Rettberg