The busy gospel of the sun

Night Races By

The night races by. It throws up
broad black sails and casts me
overboard like a shadow. Night
races by. The scuppered hours
slosh through the slits sabered
in the decksides by the last moon
and are gone. Night races by.
The terminator line rushes up like
a mad tide, swallows twilight
strollers in a wave of starry hunger.
Night races by. The silvered minutes
flint like fish bracing against the
bowbreak, scatter like sparks from
a wheel of lathed lightning. Night
races by. It tumbles colossal pressing
westward, a dawnfearing leviathan
spooked by fathoms of underlight it
cannot see, tirelessly pulls along what
it most lives in dread of. Night races
by. Emptied of eyes that sing the busy
gospel of the sun, it compensates with
retinal mirrors that absorb what
schools blindly beneath, lumbers
unrelenting toward formless shores
that cannot withstand the absence
of amassing dusk. Night races by.



I am left jettisoned in its wake with
only these words for ballast and succor.
I will know a reckless sleep. Night
races by as the day rushes forth, a
wage of bright plague to scour and
sweep what little dare foolish tarry.

Joseph Gallo
November 28, 2006