Mask Poem

CAT AT MIDNIGHT
by April Halprin Wayland

Night.
She pads out to the porch, I hide.
“Come sleep with me,” she says,
while turning off the light.

I wait.
She goes to bed.
Then mastering my fright,
I slink inside.

I’m careful where I tread
I tiptoe past his plate
and cross a rope he’s shred,
then sneak around his crate,

peer in its door with hope:
perhaps he’s dead.
Nope.
The mutt is just asleep.

I leap onto her bed
It’s good I am so light.
But from my bedspread post,
I hear a muffled groan

and freeze.
Dog hasn’t raised his head—
he’s sleeping like a stone.
I breathe—then move again with ease.

Open, on the bed,
a book she’s left unread.
I curl up in her crook
encircled, I am safe

from Fleabag
one more time.
Another night of grace:
she’s mine.

(c) 2011  April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved

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The story behind the poem:
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I love Mask Poems.  In a mask poem, I slip inside an inanimate object or animal.  I studied for twelve years under the master children’s poet, Myra Cohn Livingston.  In her book, POEM-MAKING: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry, Myra writes about this poetic voice :
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Norma Farber has written poems in which she pretends to be a turtle… Harry Behn imagines himself as a river and Carl Sandburg becomes a pumpkin…poets never feel too old to pretend.”