The Cellar

By John Ziegler

Grandma sent me down the creaky wooden steps 
to fetch jars of dilly beans and pickled beets. 

Which aroused my anxiety because 
there was a monkey paw in the back corner.
Not so menacing by daylight
but after dark, that’s when the thing came alive.

It was a fuzzy hunk of brown insulation
on a water pipe, half hidden by a tapestry of cobwebs
but it moved a little when dim light 
from the bare bulb lit its fur.

Beneath it, mortar fell from the stone walls, 
its moisture attracting centipedes
and the occasional cricket which chirped
the same sound a monkey paw would make.

Hip boots hung from a hook behind the Masonite cabinet
stocked with canned goods, mouse traps and flypaper.
They looked like baggy pants,
a dark man who watched over the crock 
of fermenting sauerkraut.          

The hole in the wall near the ceiling
was the place where the snake would crawl,
had the smell of snakes.

John Ziegler is a poet and painter living in a mountain town in northern Arizona.