Here’s my draft for today Wednesday 04.24.19.
Quiet the Night
I was reading a piece this morning
that a friend, maybe drafted yesterday,
and posted online
There is a phrase about laughter
how it splays down the streets of the city
at 2:00 a.m.
I can picture that, the echoes
bouncing off dark buildings
reaching, a hand, fingers of sound running
down empty streets, past idle traffic lights
blinking, unthinking
about fingers that can run
I see, in brown leather gloves
I remember times I’ve been alone
in the middle of the night
wandering streets, the insomniac walking dead
mostly in Madison
listening to the nearly nothing of my breath
sometimes a sounding of soft wind
perhaps my friend’s laugh, losing
energy near the end of its journey
and I’ll suddenly feel like the keeper
of that dying laughter, of diminishing wind
and of losing dark
all working, us together, against
the rival world of so much sound
that soon will awake, stretch, and make
that rosy fingered dawn
win noisier and noisier as it drags
me
from my rule of all that is night
no laughing matter
My friend may have written that line
just for me
I kid you not
Lanning Lee 