Why Do You Stay Up So Late? By Marvin Bell Late at night, I no longer speak for effect. I speak the truth without the niceties. I am hundreds of years old but do not know how many hundreds. The person I was does not know me. The young poets, with their reenactments of the senses, are asleep. I am myself asleep at the outer reaches. I have lain down in the snow without stepping outside. I am frozen on the white page. Then it happens, a spark somewhere, a light through the ice. The snow melts, there appear fields threaded with grain. The blue moon blue sky returns, that heralded night. How earthly the convenience of time. I am possible. I have in me the last unanswered question. Yes, there are walls, and water stains on the ceiling. Yes, there is energy running through the wires. And yes, I grow colder as I write of the sun rising. This is not the story, the skin paling and a body folded over a table. If I die here they will say I died writing. Never mind the long day that now shrinks backward. I crumple the light and toss it into the wastebasket. I pull down the moon and place it in a drawer. A bitter wind of new winter drags the dew eastward. I dig in my heels.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:50:54 +0000
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