Mr Fear

Mr Fear

-Lawrence Raab

He follows us, he keeps track.

Each day his lists are longer.

Here, death, and here,

something like it.

Mr Fear, we say in our dreams

what do you have for me tonight?

And he looks through his sack,

his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds

the right one. Maybe he’s sorry.

Tell me, Mr. Fear,

what must I carry

away from your dream.

Make it small, please.

Let it fit in my pocket,

let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.

Fear, let me have

a small brown bat

and a purse of crickets

like the ones I heard

singing last night

out there in the stubbly field

before I slept, and met you.

The personification of Mr. Fear is what I love so much about this poem. It makes the reader relate so much easier to the poem as compared to just talking about why no one enjoys fear. The image in my head of Mr. Fear plotting against the narrator with his sack of troubles reminds me of something evil. The fear in this poem is not just being afraid of something, its about nightmares. The narrator knows that Mr. Fear will give him or her nightmares, and the narrator embraces that and wishes for a small scary dream. 

I have a hard time with the idea of “a small brown bat and a purse of crickets.” The narrator wants these things from Fear, but are they meant to be deathly scary, a small nightmare, or a safe haven? The poet knows Fear is present, so is he or she asking for mercy or trying to settle with Fear? The sound of crickets in the yard while falling asleep can be comforting for some, but a small brown bat is troublesome for my reasoning. I think it is meant to be safety for the narrator to protect him of her self from Fear. Can Mr. Fear be afraid of anything, like a bat? What about the power of not being scary to others? The narrator is embracing the fear he or she is given, which can make Mr. Fear seem less scary. Maybe a small brown bat is just another small fear that the narrator has.

“Here, death, and here something like it” What is the poet trying to say here? That all things that we are scared of are related to death? People may be afraid of death, but that’s not the only thing to be scared of, is it? I’m afraid of spiders that crawl around my backyard, but I know that death will not come because of those spiders. So why did the poet phrase those words just so? Do spiders scare me just as much as death scares me?