Night Light

“. . .artificial light tempts us to forget the meaning of night.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers 

With a neighbor who couldn’t tolerate light, 
I took stairs in the dark, 
felt for knobs and shapes 
of cabinets in windowless rooms. At home, 
more and more I left off switches 
and felt a vigilance in the eye’s 
delicate instrument: by day we forget 
other presences that move in beside us after night 
has had time to soften everything, 
and shadows seem to dissolve into 
rather than out of existence. . . . 
In the dark we remember the pen 
left in its certain spot, but forget 
the obvious: on our way to retrieval 
trip over the chair. 

I sit without lights and hear sounds of leaves 
crisping in wind, a clock’s tick 
enlarged from another room. 
Books on their shelves rise 
like a whole range of mountains, and I think 
of my father, once a high-wilderness guide, 
awaiting dawn’s first tinge from a bedroll; 
or skies like the many shades of bruises; 
how I learned to love bittersweet 
from the darkest chocolate. 
Around me, a sense of past scenes ripens 
to a climate that shapes what is 
and is to come. At times daylight 
recognitions seem misperceived, the forgone 
fused with what’s real 
and what’s out of sight 
into some great continent. . . 
undiscovered, unexplored.