The hip old mill of the disco
stops grinding the wind into power.
A soft nothingness descends
like a million moths filtering
through cobwebs and cobwebs of moonlight,
leaving the anesthetized eyesight bobbing
like duo lanterns on local boats.
In the gray allegiance of pre-dawn,
an inventory of tackle, nets, and floats
is visible now the night is gone.
Then the pill of the sun is thrown
and the titration point is behind us,
irretrievably clarifying things.
Darkness is exchanged for daylight
in a parenthesis of clouds white as snow,
as the trackless frost on a winter’s pane
that once seemed a window on the timeless.
Oh eternal brevity of twilight,
winged hiatus between Then and Now, between
our minds and the brute stone wall of our senses.
About Andrew H. Oerke
Andrew Oerke was a Peace Corps Director in Africa and the Caribbean, and for many years president of a private and voluntary organization, working in and visiting more than 160 countries. He was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship at the Freie Universität in Berlin. His work has appeared frequently in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, and in many other publications in the U.S., England, France, Germany, Lebanon, Malawi, Kenya, the Philippines, Jamaica, and Mexico. In 2003, he was given the award for literature by the UN Society of Writers and Artists.
