The Longest Night
Nov 30 2010


The longest night
of winter.
The moon, extinguished,
the feeble light of stars
at the end of a million years.

Out here, I can see the porch-light for miles
welcoming me home.
It looks like a snow-globe
gently shaken.
The ground glows,
its soft white cover
reminding me of innocence,
never touched.
And forgiveness,
excusing the sins of fall
of things not done,
in a year
when winter came so suddenly.

A flash freeze,
a messy thaw, like false spring.
Now snow
relentlessly falling.

My footsteps are sharply etched
in the soft wet surface
here, in the 40W light.
But follow them back
and they fill-in, gradually
— a precise map,
conflating time
and distance.
Until the last footstep disappears
in a field of perfect white,
all evidence of my passing
erased,
and who would ever miss me?

Like starlight
I decay in time and space;
not quite so far
as the galaxy’s outer reaches,
but ending here, as well.
Where the light of a single bulb
is strong enough to overwhelm
a thousand suns.