Day Turns to Night

During the day, layers stand up, 

pinnacles and fingers

—red, brown, amber, grey—scratching at the sky, 

slicing up clouds, 

old warriors knowing the cycle of light was their terms, for then, for now. 

Then night beckons. 

At first, the blood orange glow sucks the light away, ripping rays as they beat between the cracks in dry clay. 

Red turns purple. 

Brown turns black. 

The amber flints green and then disappears. 

The sun sinks from a circle drum 

to half crescent, 

to a curve, 

to a line, 

until the horizon eats it whole. 

The night is a roar. 

Stars dancing first, so far above, clamoring spectators, applauding another cycle. 

Then they stop. 

They halt as the first gust ascends, 

polished knives, Stygian razors, thin layers disintegrated, one by one, with no ceremony or ritual, 

gone. 

Then, they swirl together, forming chisels, mallets, diamond augers,

tearing away clumps and clods, 

grinding and sawing all that was not meant to be there in the first place. 

Spirits set free,

the mourning souls buried beneath the earth, the ones that knew, that had seen, that had loved and fought, the ones who bled into clay.

They dance for the stars that applaud in turn, pleased by another show, a few coins tossed into the buckets that the new day holds up, the tithe for our son. 

The stream and scream,

stars jump to their feet, the darkness in between turns to ink,

and the stories get told once again, as the day breaks into the fray.

Dorian LaGuardia
July 2021