Into the Night
By
Bart Edelman
If you manage to go
Too quietly into the night,
Who knows you’re there?
How does it feel, lost,
Somewhere out among stars,
Unfamiliar with the route.
Believe me, a destination exists,
For each and every one of us--
Even when it seems, oddly,
Impossible to conceive.
This is why frequent noise,
Always eases the journey,
Keeps you from needless sleep,
When the end is in sight--
Despite your failure to see it.
Shout, sing, speak, summon.
Surely, make yourself heard.
Greet the darkness with grit.
Become what it is you desire.
Tell a tale well worth told.
Looking Glass
Entranced with herself--
Making love to the mirror
Whenever she passed it,
Addicted to a reflection
She possessed in the image
Framing what defined her life.
Enthralled by it all--
The glitz, the glamour, the glare--
Anything that had a spark
Gave her a sense of light,
Flickering down an empty hallway
She darkened each evening.
Enveloped in mystery--
Bent on her own undoing--
Finding clues where none existed,
Peddling herself up narrow streets
Named after the last soul
She sought to resuscitate.
Ensnared on fate’s bed--
Escaping a luxury she could ill afford,
Clinging to what little she earned,
And the looking glass became nothing
But history’s most unsightly act--
A vision she dare not view.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
By
Bart Edelman
If you manage to go
Too quietly into the night,
Who knows you’re there?
How does it feel, lost,
Somewhere out among stars,
Unfamiliar with the route.
Believe me, a destination exists,
For each and every one of us--
Even when it seems, oddly,
Impossible to conceive.
This is why frequent noise,
Always eases the journey,
Keeps you from needless sleep,
When the end is in sight--
Despite your failure to see it.
Shout, sing, speak, summon.
Surely, make yourself heard.
Greet the darkness with grit.
Become what it is you desire.
Tell a tale well worth told.
Looking Glass
Entranced with herself--
Making love to the mirror
Whenever she passed it,
Addicted to a reflection
She possessed in the image
Framing what defined her life.
Enthralled by it all--
The glitz, the glamour, the glare--
Anything that had a spark
Gave her a sense of light,
Flickering down an empty hallway
She darkened each evening.
Enveloped in mystery--
Bent on her own undoing--
Finding clues where none existed,
Peddling herself up narrow streets
Named after the last soul
She sought to resuscitate.
Ensnared on fate’s bed--
Escaping a luxury she could ill afford,
Clinging to what little she earned,
And the looking glass became nothing
But history’s most unsightly act--
A vision she dare not view.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
