The Four Minds Poem by Daniel Brick

The morning mind knows it will end
in a blaze of glory it does not own.
This is reason enough for its sluggishness,
the fact it doesn't stir into action,
but mopes and pouts, makes long faces
in a gigantic sky mirror, spends excessive
hours beautifying itself, but to no avail:
thoughts are not attracted to a terminal
brain-stage, even a glamorous one.

But, oh, the splendor begins at noon!
The afternoon mind is a flaming chariot,
igniting thoughts that calculate, coordinate,
consecrate in a seamless simultaneity
of wide-awake energy. The afternoon mind
is a jazz concert of fully-empowered
street-men who can improvise a whole city
out of half a dozen notes and echoes of
Billie Holiday short-changing the blues!

Welcome to evening and the evening mind.
It is sly, subtle, surprisingly
sympathetic. It has been known to sacrifice
itself to lengthen its sister mind,
the night, the deep night of stars and caverns,
of promises and betrayals, of febrile hopes
and monstrous despairs. Hidden deep in the night
mind are the gaudiest poems of humanity, epics of
sleep-walking warriors and lyrics of dark lovers.

But what of the milder sister, the evening mind?
She defers to the heavy sway of the long night,
which Basque poets say is the time between dogs
and wolves. But she has neither claws nor fangs.
She is the twilight that spreads her dimming light
like soft wool blanket over vexed souls and weary
bodies, and she summons sweet unconsciousness
to replace the harsh light of the earlier minds.
And in her half-sleep, half-waking, she purges thoughts.