Night Whimsy

Night Whimsy

 Previously printed in Out Loud Anthology III by Midwest Writing Center, 2009

in the as yet

unspoiled evening

the contrails criss-cross effortlessly,

secret roads

to all the places I’ve never been

and I wonder

who lives in the night blush cities

along the puffy, expanding avenues,

focused points of exhaust

able to disappear and reappear

without tar buckets

and sweaty men in orange vests

are they held in place temporarily

by a giant system of sky hooks

engineered as precisely

as the pyramids

by mystic cloud men

ambivalent about their ephemeral chains

are they jealous

of the greens and browns,

bored by blue spectrums and silence

do they yearn

for the tree-clotted shade

peeking through banks of white

and newly mown grass

more exotic than rain scent

do they wonder

about our ant-like figures

scattered like rat droppings

unrecognizable as civilizations

evolving into extinction,

clover-leaves so convoluted

only natives can maneuver

the decidedly un-celestial commute

but when the stars

burst forth poking through

the flat black of night spool,

old friends

twinkle from beyond

and the roads untraveled

aren’t quite so important

           —Katherine McLeod Searle

             15 June 2009