Night fear illusions

“. . . terror at night of things generally wrong in the universe.”

--Virginia Woolf

Sometimes

in the middle of the night

awake under a panoply 

as caustic as Doré 

illustrating Dante

spelunking 

to the cave's center 

of unsuppressed terror

asking

will I ever get out of here

alive?

If so, only temporarily of course.

Fear, tap, tap, taping again and again 

like a table leg in a Victorian 

séance. 

Moonlight over the wrong shoulder,

strangers 

waiting in appearing shadows, 

bat fear 

everywhere in the fecundity of darkness.

Snakes 

under my bed  

awake 

suddenly, hand spilled

over the bedside.

Winter bed sheets' chill

maybe. Or dinner's spiced rellenos'

reflux. 

Illusions 

finally exhaust even magicians:

a life-time of spectacular escapes

until even Harry Houdini 

couldn't 

get back.