Welcome to Day 1 of the 2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge! Let’s get some poeming done this month!

For today’s prompt, write an appearing poem. This could be a poem about something (or someone) appearing out of nowhere. Or it could be about appearances–appearing one way to some people; appearing another way to others. If you’re new to my prompts, let me share one thing: I’m totally fine with you stretching the prompt in any direction you need to write; in fact, I encourage it. Now get poeming!

Competitor

I know they are there

because the neighbor's dog is barking 

and it is late, late and the leaves are black

and the light on them white

in a small breeze, shifting like many black and white striped faces

little dark, shining eyes staring 

from some nighttime perception

or are those maybe-eyes ink-black berries - October ripe

night-glistened, looking at nothing at all?

But there is just this one

(I think)

who appears directly out from under my deck

like an actor onto a stage

and looks at me - yellow-haired, I am,

pink in my pink nightgown

backlit by my baby blue kitchen light

trembling and as ready for a fight

as I will ever be

I throw things at him

He flinches once

Then ignores me

and the useless things- - socks and circles of rope -  I throw

without meaning

as I don't belong to the night

to the world of black and white

or to nature, really so much at all

I don't have claws or fearsome cries

But the freeway that is mine has criss-crossed his world

split him from the river and the river scent,

from the blackberry brambles and the fat frogs

that surrounded all teeth at once and fed him

fully by the cool water

- his mask reflected

in the slipping, greyscale, moonlit surface.

I find nothing else to throw and see,

for now, he is just cleaning his claws

on my lilies - though he wants my pretty little fish

that flash cadmium orange in the day 

At night they are just arrows of a lightness

diving into and becoming darkness

protected, not by me, but by the deep

and the eventual passage of hours that will bring back

their useless given names and their color

the protection of the sun

the apparent safety of the surface

of their endangered little fabricated world.