Ode to Night Poems
The many hands of possibility lift me from bed,
carry me out into the small hours as I rise and walk
to the back of the house, crack the window, let
night seep in, drop an orange extension cord out
onto stone pavings, hook a lamp under my elbow,
smell the cold night in the opened door
and walk out to the patio table.
I see the eyes of a sleepy cat under the azaleas,
plug in the lamp. There’s a thrill to the body
in this time of quiet and solitude, world’s work
hours of noir detectives and burglars, where, here,
gentle shadows through tall pines in mist gowns
of moonlight suggest, only, a larger world — this
time before time, time of elective mutism of
birds, except the owl, his soft call to other owls
the only noise above my lampshade’s cone of light.
Where night’s invisible heart sits so still on the earth
no one could want the sun to come, kill the ceiling
of silent stars, certainly not a poet with pen who
can see the past, imagine the future while a sleeping
cat dreams at the edge of lamplight — until daybreak’s
laughter at the corner school bus stop, the starter’s
brrr jump in a neighbor’s old car.
Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property with virgin pines, live oaks, magnolias, palm trees and varieties of ground vegetation, all home to various species of birds and animals. He has recent poems in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Third Wednesday, and San Pedro River Review.
