ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS
Sequence: 3
ONLY AT NIGHT
only at night can I really see
the world I live in and how far
into it I have fallen
each star a nod in my direction across a room
not infinite but so large it might as well be
a nod I cannot feel really acknowledges me
but is simply given to a memory
of those other stars nearby at its birth
and now long since hollowed to nothing by their fires
a nod given to no one
it is dawn that blinds me
to this large world both immensely heavy
and atomically light
sunrise that blocks the horizon
over which I peered in that early hour
that held my first wakefulness
the anonymizing brilliance
that closes me into a world I cannot leave
and assembles a sky to cover me
as if uncovered I would have a vision
too large to find myself within