Night Poem by D A Phinney

Fear is the night enveloping our souls
We light a billion candle watts to display our courage
We travel from enclave to enclave
Pretending we are the Sun's children
But the trains whistle lonely past our graveyards
They howl in the deep valleys
And we turn up the music
For the woods are always dark
And you will not go there

To us our cities blaze against the sky
But to the night they are meager embers
The night is an endless shroud
The fear that suffocates
And at 3am if you turn to the quiet
If you look out over the city and listen
Beyond its artifice you will hear
The silence of the black sky
Hanging over the Earth
The trains keening in their terror
Racing blindly through the empty hills
For the woods are always dark
And you will not seek to know the night
At 3am

You look up
The night extends forever
The cold stars are all the daytimes
There can ever be
And every daytime is reached only
Through the crossing of the vast night
Riding the blind fearful panic of time
Through the woods
Through the emptiness
Through the hollow place inside us
Where lonely trains moan
Through our darkest dread
Of nothing