Nightfall

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 blooms

bent 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 cover

but makes itself known.
Not dawn.
I don't anticipate dawn.