Mother Hood

She stood there,  
slightly ominous with a red hood that covered most of her face,
with a long red coat that reached all the way down to her boots.
“What about her?” I asked him curiously “she looks really cool”,
“Her name is Mother Hood” he responded “but she’s a villain”.
“How can she be a villain is she’s a mother?” I asked surprised,
“Technically she’s not a mother” he said as we glanced at her stance,
menacing like something out of a comic book or a graphic novel.
 
Then I wondered,
why on earth he would conjure up such a villainous creature?
The way she moved amid the unsuspecting crowd with such ease,
she seemed to be so wicked with an unknown objective.
She shifted like a shadow, a wretched memory of dreams past,
conveying a foreboding of unavoidable consequences that lie ahead,
her coat moved like a cape, her hood never revealing her eyes,
as if she’d been stripped of her sight and only had ominous vision.
 
As I drove away,
her silhouette seemed to follow like a faceless apparition in the night,
Lurking in the shadows of the hills, soaring fast like the blink of the eye,
on the corner of gas stations she appeared over and over again,
on the dimly lit lonely roads that ran parallel to the highway,
she was there, watching, trailing, silent, never revealing her true nature.
It could be said that under her tough guise was a feminine slender figure,
but her presence felt strong, sinister, malicious and so calculating.
 
Yet Mother Hood
never approached, never interacted or tried to make any contact,
it was as if her whole purpose was to let you know she was there,
to let you know that she knew your every move, your every intention
so that you’d freeze or give into some kind of unreal internal fear.
She was unrelenting in her pursuit, a dark superpower of sorts
which seemed to take a hold if you acknowledged her being there,
like a nightmare you had as a child which now had materialized.
 
It was in the mountain pass
where I realized who Mother Hood was and why she was there,
that shadow that chased me through the valleys and hills as I drove faster,
I slowly sank into my seat, with discomfort and anxiety slowly spreading,
looking up at the peaks where the moon cast a pale light amid the dark,
I was young again, not a man but a boy scared of the tale I had just been told,
and then I remember what my son had said as he had presented his art work,
“A hero needs a counterpart, a villain who plays on his opponent’s weakness”.
 
 
#ElizabethBishop
In the style of "The Man-Moth"