Poem #15 for Poetry Month -- "Long ago I heard footsteps"

[nightdog_barks]

This poem is from the American writer Miriam Bird Greenberg, and is about a call for help on a dark night. One might say it's a tiny, condensed version of a Nightdog story.



Long ago I heard footsteps


Long ago I heard footsteps
come to the door, and a man

knocking. We’ve had an accident

up on the road, can you help
he pled at the unanswered door,

and kept knocking.

He might have been a thief
but soon enough a woman’s howl

lit up the night, and I put a knife
in my belt. Around dawn

I figured their fortunes
might be worth change.


~ Miriam Bird Greenberg
From Poetry, November 2010
Online source here.

Comments

[blackmare]

So ... our narrator, here, is ... not a good guy, is he?

[nightdog_barks]

I think that would be a reasonable assessment, yes.

:-D

[blackmare]

I am a bit embarrassed at how long it took me to figure out what was going on here.

I read it, re-read, read again, gave up, and half an hour later it hit me.

[nightdog_barks]

:-)

You're probably just tired.

[blackmare]

Well, yes, there's that. But also, duh.

I am still not sure just what's meant by "I figured their fortunes might be worth change."

[nightdog_barks]

I read it as their fortunes (their lives) might be worth a bit of money.

:-)

[blackmare]

But if it was dawn by then ... one wonders what he'd done to them in the mean time.

[nightdog_barks]

I don't think he'd done anything. I think either (a) there were other people in whatever terrible place this is, and they'd been doing something, or (b) the man and woman who needed help were stuck, and the woman was in bad shape and deteriorating (thus the howl, which could have been a cry of pain).

Possibilities, possibilities. *g*

ETA that thinking about it, to me (b) is the more likely probability.

[pwcorgigirl]

I liked it because it's possible to read it both ways: the people were in an accident and the narrator decided after a while to change their fortunes -- give them aid but go out with the knife in his belt just in case, or he goes outside, does something awful to them, which is implied by the scream and slipping the knife in his belt afterward, and then decides their fates at dawn.

[nightdog_barks]

:-)

And this is true also.

I thought the narrator here was interesting -- he (or she) seems to be frightened of thieves, which implies this (wherever they are) is a violent place.

Detective Sergeant Ronnie Brooks does not approve.

[pwcorgigirl]

Oh, that one's a bit sneaky, and it really does sound like little Nightdog tale.

[nightdog_barks]

It is a sneaky little poem. It's a bit like a spooky, urban legend-type nighttime story.