Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

P O E M S F R O M
P R O V I D E N C E
SON OF DRACULA
I was the pale boy with spindly arms
the undernourished bookworm
dressed in baggy hand-me-downs
(plaid shirts my father wouldn’t wear,
cut down and sewn by my mother),
old shoes in tatters, squinting all day
for need of glasses that no one would buy.
At nine, at last, they told me
I could cross the line
to the adult part of the library
those dusty classic shelves
which no one ever seemed to touch.
I raced down the aisles,
to G for Goethe and Faust
reached up for Frankenstein
at Shelley, Mary
(not pausing at Percy Bysshe!)
then trembled at lower S
to find my most desired,
most dreamt-of —
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
This was the door to years of dreams,
and waking dreams of dreams.
I lay there nights,
the air from an open window chilling me,