NIGHTS
Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night
And see my father slide toward the grave:
Look left, and death will enter from the right
Or jump on you from some tremendous height
No matter if you run or act all brave.
Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night,
Not looking flash, not looking for a fight.
A car screams through a light: a nasty shave.
Look left, and death will enter from the right,
And if he passes it’s no oversight.
He whispers, “Go, get all that you must crave.”
Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night,
Not looking for the very things I might,
Not looking for the years that you once gave.
Look left, and death will enter from the right.
My father’s crawling upward to your light,
I tell myself, while counting years to save.
Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night.
Look left, and death will enter from the right.
NORTHERN NIGHTS
On nights when snow falls fast
On nights all pupil black
God pauses too:
At night in thickest snows
The universe must look
For other loves,
And proofs of God that click
When read in any book
Sprawl open wide,
All night they lay askew
When snow piles up in yard
And just gets worse,
Each heavy bough in cast,
While wind takes off its gloves
Out back of house
And thrashes snowflakes hard,
Those flakes that ride the black
While we watch too.
PARTIAL ECLIPSE
Late summer, over forty years ago,
I went with friends to laze around
Some reeds beside a stream,
The evening overfull with time,
And simply lay there looking, talking low.
Next week we’d go our ways: three boys,
A girl with whiskey lips;
And words came thin with that eclipse,
And there was nothing much at all to see,
But life was waiting there, immense,
Impatient, at each home,
And other words began their hum.
Tonight I look out from my peeling porch
And know those same old waves of heat,
Taste bourbon with a lick,
And feel again her slow, torn look.
(excerpted from Barefoot by Kevin Hart)
