Lost in the Noise

Dusk falls, not quite indigo,
The streetlights flicker on.
The trees across the quarry silhouette
against the last light.

It is silent tonight.
No traffic. No wildlife stumbling
over the loose stones piled high.
Too early in the season for spring peepers.

You lay on the ground
as the darkness surrounds you like an old friend,
an old enemy. staring up, watching.

Soon, the Milky Way will drift out of the night.
You could never see it in the places you grew up,
lost in the city lights where only the brightest stars
cut through the glare,

and the most beautiful, most subtle skies
were lost. Sacrificed to convenience stores
and shopping centers and streetlights,
thousands of them.

Here, there is one, a ways down the street,
an aberration in this rural town.
it is not dependable, some nights on,
some nights not. No one complains.

It buzzes slightly, this one lone streetlight,
then a series of clicks and it too grows silent,
grows dark, as if God decided darkness
was good and proper for the night.

Sit here long enough and you will see satellites
move slowly across the sky. Sit here long enough
and you will grow cold as the Milky Way emerges,
impossibly bright in this empty place you live.

Impossibly bright, yet easily stifled
by the garish light of cities and towns,
like the perfect woman, stepped over
by those to loud to see her,

too certain of their own light they cannot see others,
less bright,
more beautiful, too often,
lost in the noise.

About this poem

Here’s one of those things I have come to know the older I get. Often the most wonderful people are lost to the loud.

The picture was taken at the quarry across the street from my home.

Tom