Jul/Aug 2013 Poetry Special Feature |
Digital artwork by Adam Ferriss
Nightfall
It comes without warning, like a hybrid
car, silent and expensive. Fluid,
on dark tires.I could say it parks on the street
where the curb has our house number
painted on it in green,but I don't want
to sustain that comparison. Then I do:
no one gets out for a while.Another car arrives, a real car.
Young people join others in the back yard
around a small fire.The air is full of hung water.
Gray all day, it's difficult to delineate
day from night. I'll give it that much.Then the command: hide and seek.
Voices, running feet. Damage to the edges
of the flower beds, and to bloomsbent down by wind and rain.
The thrill of what's fallen: night.
What night means.Darkness as a spur to save things
in various envelopes
that used to hold something else.By things, I might mean seeds
gathered late in the summer or early in the fall
after many more interludes of sunlight.I could make the darkness
lift or rise, like curtains onto bright entertainments,
but it's just the hush I feel now,anticipation of silvery unknowns
or the wash of light when a full moon
is hidden by cloud coverbut makes itself known.
Not dawn.
I don't anticipate dawn.