nocturne

You are woken in the night

by something that cannot speak

in daylight, that has no purchase

in the hard currency of your life.

Outside is the shallow well

of a sleeping town; electric lights

peek faintly into black space,

and the lithe ghost of the dark

slips into the only house that

bids it welcome. Your husband

lies snoring, dreams of another

world, offers you rough the gift

of aloneness. Know this:

what arrives here cannot

be other than itself, and

has no care for you. It

has no words, and no respect

for yours, so finds your body,

colonizes your spine, feeds

you up into the sea of stars. You

may think you are changing,

or hope; but you are simply

failing to forget, allowing

stillness to be recognized.

You are momentarily disappearing,

to enter your own voice, see

with your own eyes, become

the body you gave birth to;

you have returned to

your own faithfulness,

your own unimaginable

emptiness.

~ Andrew Colliver

from the unpublished manuscript A Day of Light