In the study

my desk is a four-square beat chunk of industrial oak,

squatting in the corner

like some poorly domesticated fusion reactor.

Tendrils of steam rise from small leaks just under the top

moistening the air,

while inside the drawers

a frothy churning mass bucks up

and splatters against the walls.

 

Paper, diskettes, and binders litter the carpet,

creeping toward the door.

Or breaking from the top,

a small object,

too quick to be seen,

hits the floor and scampers off.

 

It's worse at night.

Lying in bed,

you hear the skitter and the rumble,

small voices like children giggling in the linen closet,

but when you get up to check, they are all asleep,

the children that is,

while from the poetry room there is a quick movement,

a rush of air.

 

Stepping in, heart twitching in your chest,

you turn on the lights,

but there is nothing but the papers

littering the shelves,

or one drifting lazily toward the floor.

 

It was my daughter who finally called the exterminator.

After a quick inspection,

he sat down with us soberly.

Looking hard at the table, he said,

"You didn't tell me it was poetry."

 

"The ad said you could kill anything," she quickly responded.

 

"Yeah," he nodded,

"But you got a mean case."

And he looked at us hard,

"And I got family."

--that, as if perhaps family were yet another kind of infestation--

The trucks arrived in the evening.

 

Stainless steel nitrogen-refrigerated tanks.

We were advised to spend the night in a motel.

No, he wouldn't take a check.

 

We found him the next night,

when we came home.

He was crouched in our bedroom closet

with a flashlight

reading from Henry Miller's

Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymus Bosch.

 

So now the desk just steams and fumes

and whimsy skitters the floor.

Not even the pets or the kids

go in there much anymore.