The First Fall Poem Of 2018 Poem by Daniel Brick

Up late the day before, night blurring into dawn,
too busy with thoughts and rough drafts
to even notice that slow procession of stars
across the Milky Way, that cosmic theater that gave
Whitman so much delight. It surrenders a knowledge
to us we do not have labor to acquire: it just spills
into our lives. And we feel our human-beingness
stretched all the way to the sanctuary of God and His Angels.

But now in the waning hours of this day,
I sit for hours barely moving, not even thinking
ripples my calm. I am compensating no doubt
for the excesses of last night's watch. My thoughts
had been streaked with dawn light, had grown suddenly
bright and airy. Yes, the moment enclosed a quiet place,
a heart space, unruffled by fear and doubt, where
I rested, too tired to play the melancholy Prince, but -

ready to affirm, "Friends, let us play the roles
best suited for each of us. Let the sun lift out of us
the purest voices that will replace nights's mumbled speech
with the clear clarion call of morning's fresh starts."
Of course, it is too late to puff up my ego with displays
of wit and innocence: we have burned through time, we have
trekked across space. We have reached this moment and
arrived at this place. There may a higher plan we are part of,

or we may just be fellow travelers, moving in tandem with those
who alter destiny with their slightest preordained gestures.
Whitman appears again, and guides us by the gentlest words of
his last poems. The heroic gestures have had their sway, the Songs of Myself have been loudly sung. Autumn rivulets have replaced
the surgings of the sea, and we are content to let a solitary
bird, a pale brown thrush, sing the anthem of final discovery.
Is this moment the stillness of noonday or the silence of midnight?