I could not bear
being haunted by a bear,
black, brown or grizzly,
I wouldn’t care.
I’m pretty sure
bears incline to roar
and when they hibernate
I’m told they snore.

But haunted by a cat,
well, I like the sound of that.

I could not take
being haunted by a snake.
They’d keep me wide awake
all night for fear
they’d slip inside my dreams
and hiss abruptly in my ear!

Though you’d never
know for sure where
a ghostly cat was at,
I would definitely prefer
their otherworldly purr
to a spectral hiss
or a phantom roar.

Trees are really fingernails,
That’s my granny’s great belief,
The fingernails of giants
Who are sleeping underneath,

Twisting, coiling, branching,
Wormed up through the ground,
The fingernails of giants
Who once used to roam around,

And granny’s always saying
To everyone in town,
The fingernails of giants
Should never be cut down.

She’s fading now,
but in the early days,
in the old scullery
and on the stairs,
you might have felt
a sinuous weave
around the ankles,
the unmistakeable flick
of a tail tickling
your calves, the pit
at the back of the knee.

Those first winter nights
would bring a sudden
dip, a warm settling
in the bedspread
after the circling
of unseen paws.
Once,
reading late and alone,
I actually saw
the dent appear
in the lamp’s yellow light.

Occasionally, pushing on
the heavy oak front door,
swollen in the rain,
you might think you
caught a sudden
blur from the corner
of your eye,
streaking ahead.
Listen.
We still sometimes hear
the faintest tinkle
of a bell.