Wolf Head

It was on a dreadful winter's night.

Young but vivid the memory still,

About the terrible misshaped sight,

Its only thought was upon a kill.

Running a fever,

the covers were drawn

beneath my young chin.

Sometime during the night

I was awakened from being cold.

The moonlight

breaking through my window

was nearly bathing the room.

in an eerie lunar glow,

except for my bed

still hidden from the moon.

In the semi-darkness

I could see

that the blankets

were barely hanging on

at the foot of the bed;

one slight nudge

would cause it to lose its grip

and fall helplessly to the floor.

I was shivering.

When I sat up 

to grab the covers,

I spotted a disembodied wolf head

resting upon my dresser!

Its countenance was

terribly distorted

by light and shadow.

It looked like a boy-eating beast

looking for a feast!

Frozen by fear,

the next few seconds

rolled by in slow motion.

I decided to take a chance

of lying back down

since the wolf's head

failed to notice me sitting up.

Luckily, the dreadful head did not stir!

Too scared to cry out and

too frightened to move again,

my only place of refuge and warmth

was ready to fall to the floor,

which I forgot to grab

on my way back to the pillow...

Somehow, I summoned the courage

to cross the open field

of my coverless bed

in my quest for warmth and shelter.

I lost track of time

as I slowly but silently crept

to the edge of the world

to retrieve the clinging covers.

Still undiscovered,

I rescued the blankets, and

wormed my way back to the pillow.

Before pulling

my false sense of security

over my head,

I took one long last look

at the fearsome intruder

in my room.

This was no dream!

Completely under the covers,

all courage fled.

I dared not risk

even another wiggle

for fear of being pounced upon

by this ferocious-looking animal.

In mortal terror

I drifted off to sleep.

When morning broke

my fever was gone

and so was the head of the wolf.

The very place where

the wolf head was setting

turned out to be

a piled-up sweater

which my mom had instructed me

to put back in the closet.

The shadows of the moonlight

had played havoc with

my fevered imagination,

and I vowed to never

leave my sweater

on top of the dresser again!

The wolf head never returned

to haunt or hunt me.

Naturally, growing up

had something to do with it!

Or perhaps

it was the hanging up of my sweater

where no moonbeams

could ever transform it

into a wolf head again,

in the unlikely event

I ran a fever

during a full moon.