Brethren of Darkness by Lark Beltran

Spider-legions
traipse the room soundlessly,
trap flutterers and scuttlers
and drop their remains
to festoon moldy corners.
Bats dangle from ceiling,
flit ghostlike in moonsilver,
foul walls and torn pages
with their dung, their dead.

Before, sweet candlelight
and flower-curtained windows
kept at bay the gothic.
Views at dawn were Shangri-La.
Now, break-in´s jagged shards
litter the floor.  A tossed shirt's
pocket quivers with centipede-young
and wasps fling mud at a bookshelf.
Our complacent absence
fostered their charnal housekeeping.







Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Peru for many years as an ESL teacher.  Many of Lark´s  poems have appeared in online and offline journals.