The Truth About the Night
By John Herlihy

Then the darkness fell.
The sun swallowed like stale bread.
The night crept over the horizon.
The day waved off as an unwelcome stranger.
Shadows settle in place as if at home.
The moon casts its mysterious glow.
Forget not the stars in the night’s firmament.
They speak of infinities and eternities to come.
The horizon whispers into our ears of promises,
Promises that lie beyond the sight of our mind.
Mother Nature sets our hearts beating at her beauty.
Her mysteries but feathers that tickle our brains.
Poets speak of the night in a hush, in a prayer.
They turn night’s darkness into a mystical affair.
The provenance of night just waiting to be found;
All the poet must do is just look everywhere around

Wait a minute, I say, as I sit listening there half numb.
Why does darkness fall and where is it falling from?
How can you suggest the sun is but a piece of crust,
Simply shoved out of sight like an uninvited guest,
Or that the night creeps about like a cat? Is that just,
As the sun bids final farewell as it descends in the West?
The day is my brother and not just a stranger, alone;
Without light, shadows have no place, far from home.
And what about that moon and its borrowed light?
Why does it have to glow, what gives it the right?
And then there are those miserable little stars,
Pretending to be something meaningful, as if ours.
The horizon lures us onward with very little pledge.
Mother Nature boasts of her beauty and sharp edge.
If the provenance of the night could truly be found,
We would need not be poets to blindly look around.
Stick to the facts and do not lie, you pitiful oracles;
The night says not a word as it speaks of miracles.