The Bright Night

Every porch light, streetlight, or car light.
Every beam-gushing parking lot—unshaded window
flickering neon sign or blazing billboard.
Each phone glowing upward for cold attention.
Each light shaped to provide some petty security
or the trivial slices of misconstrued peace—
robs from us all—one more precious, gleaming star—
one more fixed monument of wonder and awe.

Our glittering dark sky guided ancients—
piloted warm stories and tangled imaginations.
Now the sky darkens in a white chowder of bright light.
The disk of galactic grace hides her slender body—
buried in the greedy pools of dark asphyxiating oils—
charring her radiant long dress in a choke of ethereal soot.
Undeservedly forgotten by us old folk—
and utterly unknown by our children.
Perplexing entire ecosystems of animal life.
The lively swarms of celestial fireflies have fallen
in the up-beaming smolders of our smudge pots.
We have lost our position—directions—our sights—
in the stirring whispers of a once-hopeful universe.
The energy of coal pulsates in filaments upon the earth
yet obscures the softer faces of beckoning space.
A once-bright wilderness of majestic dark sky
hewn to the ground and burned away—
to sleep all alone—visionless—
disoriented in the spins of our dizzying sphere.
We have failed again to discern—to protect
the cosmic lands which mirror our forgotten virtues—
the atmospheric deserts of timeless beauty and peace.

So—how do we ever describe the solitudes of night
to a world with itching ears and pixelated eyes?
Whose sour sleep evaporates in sinews of light and noise
as we lie indifferent upon overpriced white mattresses—
blinded in the dirge and spectacle of our cold artificial stars.