The Night Children
the last time I saw her we were playing she was happy
and we were playing …
The night children are leaving town, stepping
over windowsills on quiet cork feet
There’s no village, no country
that isn’t being mapped
by night children with their folded wings.
One thinks to herself if she’d only lived long enough
to slip ice cream on her tongue. Another
had just learned to spell pine tree
before her eyes stopped.
The night children are already shadows kicking transient leaves.
Not too far away a milky fingernail
taps a key and slaughters a hospital at dawn.
When daylight comes the night children are resting
in their blue thickets. They pretend to hide
so their families will feel less haunted.
The night children are in pieces on the floor.
Their names tipped like trash
which they pick up as they map and edit and sketch the land,
its waters. They know the wind needs unraveling
which takes small fingers.
Night children re-draw the borders of their families:
a crepe-paper fence, cut-out snowflakes,
state capitals, county lines . . . .
Even the grocery aisles are re-mapped.
There are corners which hug runaways,
and the kiss of an Indian Paintbrush
when curled in a summer field.
Night children crawl into backyards, lick
barbecue grills of rusted grease, pinch
lilac florets for sweetness. They sniff
at kitchen windows, press noses
into waiting barrels of trash.
Highways are full of these children
and the nourishment of fumes. One of them
is chewing at my wrist as I back out of the driveway
twisting the slippery wheel like a grown-up.
Night children sleep in our barns and garden sheds,
beneath overpasses or hunched in the great pantries of hotels.
Ghosts or blood, they leave their DNA
which is sometimes yours and mine. The night children
poke fingers into jam jars, leave eye lashes in books,
one footprint beneath a broad burning bush.
The stain of diesel dust sweeps their lips as they hitch
state highways, and the rusted undercarriages of trains.
Don’t ever think night children are finished with us.
With no desire they have swallowed our futures.
Their mothers are being continually born.
* * * * *
If I Had Been There
when April’s open window
watched my mother die
and the air thinned,
when Nate Reynard
lifted his gun, shot
his slender, gifted wife
while their two sons played
in the next room,
when the pinto stallion
pierced his belly on a crooked
iron stake, or while Stephanie
painted Peter’s portrait as the tumor
chewed through his brain.
If I had been there
as my grandfather’s arm went up
in flames –- he was only 12 –-
would I be more tender?
Each day how often does an if
arrive and grass-
hopper perch on the tongue?