This is my twelfth and final poetry column.  I shall miss these monthly maunderings.  But will my voice be missed?  It seems I have developed such a small and furtive following in one year that if I spun about suddenly, I might think I was alone.  It's very sad.  Tragic, nearly . . .  Fooled ya!  This is not the last Poetic Reflections, no matter how unread I may be.  (What a relief!  I'm glad to hear it.  I almost tricked myself.)

What is creepier than Mister Sandman, stealing toward your bed or cradle, dragging the dusty velvet mantle of Sleep?  What is scarier than a dense hair spider squatting with menace upon the floor?  What, oh what, could be ever so daunting as the middle of a stormy night when the next lightning flare could reveal a dark shape where it doesn’t belong?  What else but the wrath of an inner tempest, lashing out at all who dares to trample the contours of my sanctumonious impliety.

Imagine, if you will, the sloooooow aggravating creak of a chamber door that swings inward upon cobwebbed hinges. Musty seldom-breathed air, thick with sediment inside a claustrophobic dungeon attic, suffocates your lungs. While the throbbing irregular rhythm of a heart being squeezed by the tense grip of dread shudders in your chest.