Silently and Overnight, Perhaps

You don’t know how the thing gets in.
It helps, you guess, that it’s so sinuously thin –
which you presume enables it to winnow

and insinuate through cracks: silently
and overnight, perhaps, it creeps along
the floorboards – tightly tucks into a speck

amid the other specks beneath your desk –
you now expect that when you go out
in the morning it investigates whatever means

of ingress, egress are accessible to get it
efficaciously back to the surface you’ll
return to – to pursue what it appears to know

you daily must pursue. Compelling its pale
surface into brilliant yellow, spots of glowing
green and pink, it then availingly and deftly

drapes over your shelves and pens and papers –
praying it might make you think – if only
it could bellow, bray at you to win the prize! –

seduce you like a barker in a carny booth.
It wants so badly to be molded, painted,
stretched and blown and blasted into truth.

.