Poem of the Week...by Harry Clifton

Pipistrelle

At no point, in the whole of that northern night,

Was there total eclipse of light,

Only a yellow streak, low down in the sky

Against which little squeaks, subliminal cries

Would dash themselves, so to speak—

The pipistrelles. Hours later, dawn would break

To the sound of illegitimate shots

In the field nearby. And whether or not

She had slept, in a strange bed at the end of the house,

One must have broken in, a flitter-mouse,

Ages ago, to winter behind her shelves,

Her married remnants. A piece of the dark, detaching itself

To circle the bare bulb, as wounded, afraid

As she was. Widowhood

And the eerie light of the midnight sun,

And silence, and the abandonment, one by one,

Of room after room, to a high soprano wail,

A purity off the scale

Of human reckoning, would bring it on—

Enlightenment, time to be gone.

from the upcoming The Winter Sleep of Captain LeMass, to be published Spring2012