Day for Night
I have been pondering day and night,
and it seems clear to me
that they are quite the opposite
of those images folklore has favored--
the day as repository of life,
the hopeful spirits of light and sun
while night is the dark country,
a stretch of gloom and death.
Consider the witness of the sun,
whose calendar rolls before our eyes,
and flowers that march to the clock:
they bloom, they shine, then fade.
The birds arrive, begin their songs,
deserting us after their season,
leaving us the silences of August
and the empty nests of November.
But the night contains eternity:
the cold beauty of forever in stars
on a late summer evening filled
with ageless planets sailing their orbs,
and holds the promise of dreams,
that blessed death until the dawn
when we wake again to live
enclosed in the fatal arms of time.
Grand Prize Winner, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020
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