It’s not the meteor shower
with its wild arcs of light
that unzip the velvet dark—
what moves me is the one star
that manages to shine
through the thick atmosphere,
a lone light in this giant dome,
not more than a speck,
yet it persists, constant.
There are many ways to shine,
it seems to say, its tiny glint
winking against midnight.
And the dark is deep and long.
Posts Tagged ‘night’
Choosing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged choice, night, shine, star on August 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Sitting in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged crickets, night on August 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »
tree crickets so loud
I grow smaller
until all that’s left
of me is
hum
Why I Stay Up Late
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, mystery, night on December 17, 2020| 2 Comments »
So gently the darkness
curls around the world,
first dusky, then dim,
then lushly black—
so generous, the way
it thickly spreads
the softest of songs
until silence silks
the empty streets
and velvets the vacant rooms—
even this riotous heart
inclines toward quietude
and whatever part of me
that knows something yawns
and the part of me
who falls in love
with mystery
leans more easily
into the ever-unknown
and I meet the starry
grand embrace,
speck that I am,
and marvel
at my insignificance,
marvel at how enormous
it is, this openness,
this gratitude.
Things to Do While Not Asleep
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awake, night, sleep on October 21, 2020| 4 Comments »
Check the time. Reach for scraps of the dream you just woke from.
Close your eyes again. Remind yourself of studies that say
you’re still getting rest even if you feel awake. Curse the studies.
Curse the awakeness. Notice how cursing wakes you even more.
Toss. Count breaths of the person sleeping next to you.
Tell yourself not to be resentful of them, though you are.
Touch your hand to the sleep heavy weight of their leg. Breathe.
Try not to remember something terrible you did long ago.
Perseverate on the details. Wish you could apologize,
though you’ve long since forgotten the names.
Determine that starting tomorrow morning you will be a better person
in a belated attempt to atone for past mistakes.
Tell yourself not to look at the clock again. Look at the clock again.
Calculate to the minute how long you’ve been awake. Worry
about tomorrow. Worry about your kids. Worry about the country.
Worry that you worry too much. Refuse to look at the clock.
There is a lake in the night, dark and deep. Feel yourself held by it,
as if you are floating. As if the night buoys you, cradles you like a mother.
Miss your mother. Take a few strokes in the night lake. Notice
how quiet it is. Feel yourself slip beneath its surface.
When the light comes, swim toward the light.
Floating Feeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, meteor, mother, night, shooting stars, son, stars on August 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
I had imagined we’d see dozens of meteors
streaming across the sky, streaking,
flaming, impossibly bright.
Instead, I lay on the driveway
between my son and daughter
and we stared into the night,
laughing and singing and listening
to the sound of the earth turning,
the pavement hard beneath us—
and above us, the whole
starry firmament unfolding.
Not one shooting star did we see, no, but oh,
how the milky way swirled all around us,
our eyes wide open, my heart soaring, swarming,
a small piece of matter burning up,
glowing, impossibly bright,
never quite touching the earth.
One Illumining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, night, silence on June 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Surprise Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, losing the self, loss of the separate self, night, solstice on December 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And this is the chapter
when it just feels
too much too much
to turn on the light
and so you sit
in the dark.
This is not a myth
in which you are punished,
turned into a tree or a kingfisher—
nor is this the story
in which you discover
your own light.
No, this is the night
in which you are simply
a lifetime of tired
and unable to turn on the light.
And so it’s you
and the night.
It’s you and the night.
And then it’s just the night.
One Reveal
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, night, poem, poetry, sky on December 20, 2019| 2 Comments »
Walking at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, walking on November 11, 2019| 6 Comments »
One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?
—Rachel Carson
And so I memorize how it is
that the cheeks nearly freeze
but the body’s so warm,
how the river informs every measure
but the thoughts sift to silence,
how the body thrills
in its ability to swing one foot
in front of the other, how
walking is just another name
for recovering from falling,
how strange it seems now
that I was once afraid of the dark.
On the Eve of My 50th Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged happiness, night, poem, poetry on November 2, 2019| 5 Comments »
I wake up happy, as if the happiness
were already seeded before I woke.
As if all I have to do to love the day
is breathe. So I breathe. And love
meets me right where I am.
There are days we know we are lucky—
lucky just to wake. Perhaps it’s because
we have known dismal days when
just rising felt like strike three.
But today,I rise with happiness as present
as the dark before the dawn—not
because I deserve it, but because
it’s as natural as the milky way
spilled across the sky, as
normal as the night itself
stretched out like a blanket
to warm the sleeping world.