A Night Void

Tonight the city is a memory
and memory is only a shell
circada-skin, containing the image
thereof, but with no soul.
Tonight I move in shadows,
in fact I am an abstract shade myself,
describing only absence of the light
more so than any object in relief.
Tonight there is a silent space
where once we took the stage;
cruel peace descends upon us
as we begged for, in the world-that-was.
Tonight she shines above the city
in solemn grace the moon ascends
quietly to observe, with neither fear nor joy
the shape of places we no longer go.






April 2020

Known Present Joy

I guess we’ll sit in bubbles
waiting for the angel of death
to pass us by, or else
meet us alone—
I guess we’ll sit and wait
for the night clouds to drift past
tinting orange and pink in the morning,
then peek out from our curtained windows
to see who else survived the dark—
or others will: but I
will stand at the railing of my deck
like a passenger at the bow
sailing in this Earth ship through the stars
no worse for all the fear and waiting,
unscathed by time and the inevitable
joy and pain it brings; I will laugh
with the night, as with the morning
for every second is a gift
planned and given to us, as planned
by divine Intention from the start.
This, too, was known
those many days and centuries ago:
the present does not corrupt the past
as the future is not weighed down by Now.
We shall laugh in the morning
we shall be afraid of other things
and this present darkness is not all,
nor was it ever; only part of the whole.
The ship plunges through the waves
of time and celestial light before and after
and I will be here to feel the spray upon my face
for every moment until I’m not.








April 2020

Tiny

it gives me peace to see myself
as minuscule, the way i am;

i look at stars and notice
how they circle in their place:

beauty as precursor, and conclusion
to the whole of human life.

those silent lights, whose origins
span galactic distance, unimagined

in quiet grace above our chaos
might be dead, might have died 

long before our mothers saw them shine.






March 2020

The Adult

When I wake from sleep in the night
There are no parents downstairs.
Their heavy room
Held to the earth by its large wooden desk
And strewn about with school papers,
Business letters, documents with numbers—
Does not belong here.
They are not slumbering in their bed
Listening for us, to keep us
Safe and obedient:
It is only my wife and our children
Whose breaths I can hear; no adults;
We small children now fend for ourselves.
So I have gathered for myself
A heavy wooden desk, and many papers;
And I sleep with one ear always listening—
But deep at night
I still creep about the house
Curtained by its dark shadows,
The only child out of bed, and wonder
If my father ever felt the same.






March 2020

Lifting

We are inclined
to lift each other by the hand
—when are we taught else?








March 2020