The Ambush

A poem appears in the distance,
A squiggle of a thing from one angle,
A bit of a tune, almost, from another.

Ignore it. It can't see you from there.
Poems have notoriously poor vision.
It will probably wander away.

Whatever you do, don't provoke it
Or tease it or offer it food.
Where there's a poem, there's a poet,

And you don't want to suffer
An encounter with a poet.
Perfectly wonderful people

Become unbearable in that skin,
And those who inhabit it full time
Tend to derangement and hunger.

It was a poet like that who birthed
The notion that wolves were the ones
In sheep's clothing. Of course.

The better to sneak bad ideas
In woolly language by.
It's the poet who blamed the snake,

The toad in the garden, the sphinx.
Ok. You caught me. I'm very sorry,
But I'm going to have to bite you now.