Nicole Yurcaba’s poem Blue appeared here as part of Contributor Series 6: A Currency of Words in September. This poem opens upon a scene lush in detail and focused in scope. Nicole takes the reader into the deep part of night step by step and makes her space feel familiar.
Night Vigil
By Nicole Yurcaba
“… but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creature awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.”–Thoreau
Past midnight conversation
begins always with the same interrogating question:
softly hollered from above high,
cloaked in full moon’s milk,
illuminated by flicker-flicker fireflies–
“Who?”
which on before-dawn’s new breaking
becomes the land’s most melancholic wondering
being asked to one unsatisfied dying-ember soul,
the unknown violating trespasser,
lurking the twilight’s gone-gleaming
led by sword-wielding Orion,
haunted by your spreading death-knell wings
through Life’s criss-crossed tangled woods-web
while again you maniacally-and-double bed
“Who? Who?”
Who dares trespass, break boundary into
your darkened forested dominion,
arch-angelically you dwell?
Who falls prey to your graceful, missiled predator-swoop?
“Who? Who?”
you ask, wise and dominant,
from skeleton-branch perches,
your razored talons warrior-braced for war-flight
when the unsatisfied dying-ember soul,
the violating trespasser
aimlessly wanders into your far-sighted godliness
answering, humbled with pitiful self-admittance,
“I don’t know; I don’t know.”
Wonderful!
You have painted a scary picture and a poem for thought.