The Fool’s Dance

You thought you were safe
from what you had asked for,
you fool, even as you pulled it
toward you.

As the moonlight
fell across you in the garden,
naked from the waist up, carving
the runes into the slab of oak,
saying to yourself that safety
depended on your sure strokes and
not seeing at all that this is how
it was meant to be

it approached, concealing itself
within your certainty, your common
spirituality, your academic slant
upon such things.

You followed all the rules
and said everything right
as you worked

and so it came upon you, chuckling
in spite of itself, hearing from afar
the slight mistake you’d made:
thinking you were in control
of what you’d be summoning.

You look up.

There it is, not looking quite
as you’d expected but eager to begin
the ancient fool’s dance:
the side step, the menacing curtsey,
the too-close bow.

The leap.