You Know That Feeling You Get?

You know that feeling you get, sometimes,

the feeling like someone is watching you,

with mal-intent in mind, or just curious,

but when you turn to look, there’s no one

there? Even the small group chatting nearby

over lunch are engrossed in themselves

and don’t even notice you standing there,

let alone staring at you, lost and looking around

for whoever it was, whatever it was that you felt,

that unsettled feeling settling in.

Yeah, that feeling, the same one I get

late at night walking the dogs on these back roads

of home, familiar roads, something peering out from the dark

at me, unseen, just a sense, a feeling of being watched,

some creature with mal-intent in mind,

or just curious about me, bipedal, pulled along

by two dogs straining at their leashes lashed around my wrists,

or stopping, staring off into the dark woods, straight ahead past

the circle formed by my headlamp, illuminating nothing beyond

the light in the darkness, only shadows in the night, two

dogs ready for the chase, for they know something is there,

something less domestic than they, something I cannot see

nor hear nor even smell the feral odor of, but something

that can smell my fear and keeps its distance, waiting

for a weakness shown, a weakness sensed, mal-intent,

or curious, angry, perhaps, at the leashes binding us here,

keeping me connected to my own fears, unsettled and afraid

by what I do not know lurking in the shadows of my own creation.