A Wooly Menace, A Dream

These doddering sweaters don’t sniff my feet like they used to.
They’ve stopped nuzzling my warm legs in the evening.
What songs I mutter now
are passed up, passed by, and scoffed at for not being new.
If I stole a private moment, far off, away, maybe leaving,
would they even wonder how

to find the greener leas in the morrow, at dawn?
Soon dew-wet and weighted, still white, they would wander til
the, um, big-bad
might sally forth from treeline, spying me peaceful gone—
thinking in gaunt belly growls the blood, the meat, the kill.
That feast might make me sad.

Tonight’s fire is not as warm as usual, and
I seem more worn and beat, feeling every wiggle in the land.
These bundles of wool don’t walk.
They’ve grounded themselves in their cabals and talk
about the acrid grass, the bad, still waters, and the
bumbling dream-weaver, me.