POET’S NOCTURNE

Should one happen upon the darkness

with confidence, in familiar circumstance,

there will be no place for emptiness,

for heartfelt fear of loss from the old

bones of imagination never fully

laid to rest. Instead, the darkness, in

its time, may come forward as a comfort,

even a blessing, as a way of seeing

not only the night sky, but also the

time of dreams, as a confirmation of

the waking world by all the things the

waking world is not. Come the night, time flows

with memory; the mighty charger of

resolute action finds a world where

the observer is closer to the truth

than the actor can be, where thoughts without

an answer ring true, and cause but little

doubt in so doing, not because we must

surrender to a Mad Hatter’s world,

but, more likely, because the world of

sleep and dreams and darkness is also

our world, without which the bright world drive

rings hollow as a wind chime on a still night.

— This poem appears in the December 22, 2014, print edition of National Review.