the midnight population
of your earlier years,
full of content and the avatars
who brought you up.
Now in this night they have gathered,
one body so silent, demanding you
to address them.
Dave Smith
MOSQUITO BITING
Nosing the oiled gravel that gleams like passion
left years back under the yellow caution
light hung across from the cemetery
at Churchland Highway and Emmaus Road,
a colorless and rock-throbbing Chevrolet
stops in the dead center of midnight's glow.
Flipping a dime, the hand in the backlit door
of the Pure Oil Station, Elmer Casteen's,
halts, hovers long enough to take
the quick thrust of a single summer
bite, then spreads the small, dark stain
as the dime rings, its glimmer in my mind all
I need to hear again the laughter of that velvet
Saturday night. Around me something frail
ticks, invisible, relentless, almost
only an idea pulsed out of the darkness
not even good window screens keep out.
Honeysuckle and pine thicken my breathing
and wake me to lie naked in myself, wishing
the clock did not buck from minute to minute,