(I first wrote this poem when inspiration hit me, while I was in taiwan, after a shower. I wrote the first stanza on the fogged up mirror with my finger, which freaked out my mother when she stepped in after me)

NIGHT FALLS: a poem

The literates of the world will tell you that night
falls, as if it were
the clothes draped over the deceased, or the
lowering of the coffin lid;
as with a certain
suddenness.
That is not the case.

As any casual observer of the stars will tell you,
night does not fall.
It seeps.
It blends and mixes with the light till it becomes dark.
From the afternoon sun, it bleeds white to blue
to the stillness of the night.

Night is slow. The few awake at its apex
have seen the speed of the night,
the crawl of the stars high above in their own
desired paths. There is a stillness,
a quiet, a shutting down and out and ending
of the things of the previous day.

The literates will say that dawn breaks.
This, though, I wholeheartedly agree with.
Dawn does not appear with any suddenness,
for the light of the sun heralds its arrival
far before the luminous sphere itself
appears in the sky. A wave of blue rings
out in ripples across the clouds, and the
brightness of dawn draws out the rooster's
call. No, dawn is not swift in its arrival,
but it is ever on time.

For night seeps in sideways, not from where the
Earthbound ever fix their sight: straight upward
into the clouds; or from beneath their feet, the
haven for awkward eyes in awkward times. No, it creeps in
from periphery, the blind spots, till the
unaware find themselves utterly caught
in it (as if they knew not
that night has to fall).
But dawn, dawn always breaks.
It hides nothing for it knows the way
darkness flees. Dawn breaks as cloth tears;
as stones roll away. And as dawn returns,
life endures, continues, evermore.

Labels: poem