Halloween Apparition by Alessandra Foster

-with enormous admiration for Edgar Allan. Poe’s 18-verse, “The Raven”

Once upon a midnight eerie while I watched TV ‘til bleary,
Mysteries and forgotten lore with haunted tales from days of yore.
While I nodded, buzzing, sawing, came a scratching and a clawing
As my dog was leaping, lunging, jawing at my backyard door.
Not the usual rabbit, I muttered, gnawing by my patio door,
No, this must be something more.

Halloween can be quite scary so I soon became quite wary:
How’d my dog, adored and dear, become a feral beast to fear?
Why’d my sweet chihuahua-terrier change herself to something scarier?
Whence this need at frantic speed to try to break a windowed door?
Peered into the October night fearing a sight I might abhor—
Moon and shadows, nothing more.

Grabbed my dog to help her calm, hoping hands provided balm.
Restraint ignored, with barks galore, she hurled herself up from the floor.
Then I saw it, ghostly white, standing out against the night,
Creeping up three steps, a fright, right up to the windowed door.
Slow and slower was its pace to press its face against the door.
My frenzied dog could take no more.

She placed her face against the glass exactly where the white face was.
Nervously I laughed, ‘twas plain, the two seemed kissing through the pane.
Killer and prey with glass between was eerily weird on Halloween.
Face to face, they stayed in place, until the creature left to explore.
My dog still shaken to her core stayed riveted to the patio door.
But the white-faced possum came no more.