Vigil

*



We don't even fall like heroes,
matchstick figures in diorama cities

windows sliding open,
people walking fast
pigeons hit the wires
and the glass.

The laundromat's as dirty
as any restaurant.
Everyone wants
what everyone else
is breathing.

I light candles for this city.
No other window answers,
as if I'm mourning early
the vanishing length of night,
the dust on still walking shoes
and the jagged noise of streets
without music.


                                       

                                           -Brent Allard
previously published in Images From Ruin

Looking at Light.

*


Even though you’ve turned on every light,
you know it’s a lie.
You know that bulbs
only last a hundred hours,
and never reach every corner,
or outside the windows.

Look out the window now.
Look at the streetlight.
Nothing exists more lonely than that.
Look at the corner the light hits
and the dark universe enclosing it.

They said nothing was faster than light
but light came second.

That’s why it’s romantic
to be the streetlight,
the last lamp on the bedside table,
the candle burning on the desk,
to know you’ll never beat it back,
only hold it off a little,
until you burn out.
Still, you say,
Look at this corner,
Look through the night.

Sure, the darkness always wins.
There’s nothing to be done about that.
Although once,
I looked out
into the dim morning
and saw the lit corner,
sun coming up just behind it.
That’s got to count for something.     


                                           -Brent Allard