First thing to catch my eye
in the living room this morning
is the plastic Halloween glass
with the whimsical skeletal girls
in pigtails, shaking
Jack o’ lantern maracas
as they dance.
Two weeks after Christmas,
and not the least bit out of place.

When the Tasmanian wolf —
said to be extinct but, well,
there it certainly is, at least this morning
in the living room —
wanders in, I’m not at all
fearful.  Spider legs
and stripes, jaws like a car crusher
in this salvage yard of an apartment;
its presence make sense on first glance,

since my place is full of discards,
second hands, re-purposed items
finding new lives.  The animal
must have spun in here by chance
when the earth
passed through its dimension,
and decided to stick around.
I can do something
with anything I get my hands on;
maybe that appeals to it.

I decide to name the beast Johnny
and it looks up when I call it,
comes over, as confident in its power
as a myth.  There’s still some water in the glass
so I offer it a drink and it begins to lap,
the long pale tongue flickering,
not caring that the water comes
from an off-season source, or that
it’s going to become a metaphor for something
as soon as it blinks back into its usual state
of not being.  It’s safe here,
here in the room of taking something
that looks wrong on first glance
and making it right.