Night Friend
Night has friends too, you know.
Above Virgil’s table hangs my friend,
The overhead light bulb.
Night’s other constant friend is Virgil,
The room’s circle of light always welcoming.
Night cares little that the cold-water flat is usually dark and cold,
For Virgil shares the absorption of the beam’s warmth
As he jots down some sentences in his novel,
Usually worthy of a whisper while he considers the story’s moment of reality,
The quiet utterance of what little keeps him alive in his perpetual absence of day.
Without Virgil and the light bulb…
My shadowy existence might succumb to loneliness, you know?
Maybe even the real opaqueness of black obscurity,
That place where no one rents the room,
Where the blinds remain forever pulled,
The power turned off,
There would only be the stuffy air,
The nebulous reflection against the windowpane,
My somber gaze out at the barren tree,
Sometimes buried in deep snow,
Sometimes engulfed in windblown refuse,
Waiting with me for extinction,
When Virgil is gone,
Bulb is without life,
And the wrecking ball assails what will be
The now forgotten home for Night.
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Love ya!
Jane
I entered my Masters program at the University of Wisconsin in a cold, dark wintry setting where finding a place to live would prove to be difficult. So I opted for a fourth floor room in the YMCA, right on campus, with breakfast and dinner and paid parking that was almost impossible to get on the streets. Actually, a good deal.
My roommate was a sophomore studying French. A real introvert. I believe he made straight As in his liberal arts studies. He stayed up all night studying, while I tried to sleep. Fortunately there was no overhead single bulb light, only his desk light that I saw him hunched over every time I woke up. He slept during the day when I was gone and only got up to go to class.
The only roommate I never connected with. We were night and day different.
Ron