Fear Lights
For fear of nightstalkers gray vinyl boxes
rigged with spotlights cocked in their eaves
blast out glaring beams as the nightwalker
passes by. Sensors, not unlike synapses
that spark in feathery dendrites in the mushy
machinery of our brains, trigger searchlights
that strobe on anything that moves
with an indifference that serves a fashion
of equality. Thus the walker in black stillness
before dawn sees every lawn tableau
illuminate for him alone: septic mounds
humped like mass graves, plywood wells
and windmills, and squat plaster gnomes
he suspects descended in the myths of men
from small Neolithic people our ancestors
hunted and ate to nothing. But up above
him in black night there is no far to near
or then to there. Nothing but black nothing.
The dead loom before the nightwalker
as darker heaps lumped in the road ahead,
and so as not to be also slain by trucks,
as were these other animals, he carries
a flashlight to reveal he’s a man their law
says they should not hit, as well as being
too large to safely hit, unlike star-eyed deer
they can just drag into underbrush to rot.
No words can summon that engulfing cloy
of putrescence, more sickening
than crushed skunk, when the nightwalker
bates his breath through zones of death.
When he clicks a cone of light on dark lumps
of small dead, he reveals their real beings:
a cat or a possum, and his deliberate shaft
could be an immaterialist’s realizer, one
who can only believe in what can be seen.
For even a small free will is free will
that despite death’s insult might bestow
a nodding dignity to toothy grimaces.
A tedious slide show that flashed lifeless
scenes in stark relief lapses back
to ticking night behind him, one by one,
and only in penumbral stretches
between houses can this morning walker
glimpse a few glimmering speckles
that hint to a brilliant blazing smear of stars
that domed an unbroken universe
when he stumbled once over frozen ruts,
sky-gazing agape in utter lightlessness
toward a dot of light winking
from a distant barn. Wonder is the fear
of our beings being like a mere spark
in timeless time and endless space,
and having seen a living infinity
before and beyond his being. So--
when the nightwalker pauses to blow
his nose, he gazes up to where he knows
infinite lights proceed past blackness,
and he thrills to an instant of joy
for being for but a moment a being
dead center of before, after and forever.
rigged with spotlights cocked in their eaves
blast out glaring beams as the nightwalker
passes by. Sensors, not unlike synapses
that spark in feathery dendrites in the mushy
machinery of our brains, trigger searchlights
that strobe on anything that moves
with an indifference that serves a fashion
of equality. Thus the walker in black stillness
before dawn sees every lawn tableau
illuminate for him alone: septic mounds
humped like mass graves, plywood wells
and windmills, and squat plaster gnomes
he suspects descended in the myths of men
from small Neolithic people our ancestors
hunted and ate to nothing. But up above
him in black night there is no far to near
or then to there. Nothing but black nothing.
The dead loom before the nightwalker
as darker heaps lumped in the road ahead,
and so as not to be also slain by trucks,
as were these other animals, he carries
a flashlight to reveal he’s a man their law
says they should not hit, as well as being
too large to safely hit, unlike star-eyed deer
they can just drag into underbrush to rot.
No words can summon that engulfing cloy
of putrescence, more sickening
than crushed skunk, when the nightwalker
bates his breath through zones of death.
When he clicks a cone of light on dark lumps
of small dead, he reveals their real beings:
a cat or a possum, and his deliberate shaft
could be an immaterialist’s realizer, one
who can only believe in what can be seen.
For even a small free will is free will
that despite death’s insult might bestow
a nodding dignity to toothy grimaces.
A tedious slide show that flashed lifeless
scenes in stark relief lapses back
to ticking night behind him, one by one,
and only in penumbral stretches
between houses can this morning walker
glimpse a few glimmering speckles
that hint to a brilliant blazing smear of stars
that domed an unbroken universe
when he stumbled once over frozen ruts,
sky-gazing agape in utter lightlessness
toward a dot of light winking
from a distant barn. Wonder is the fear
of our beings being like a mere spark
in timeless time and endless space,
and having seen a living infinity
before and beyond his being. So--
when the nightwalker pauses to blow
his nose, he gazes up to where he knows
infinite lights proceed past blackness,
and he thrills to an instant of joy
for being for but a moment a being
dead center of before, after and forever.
