Night coming? asks my son as the window darkens,
sun passed over by a raft of cloud. He tells his day
by shifts in light, unable yet to read nuance or number.
I tell him no as the bright returns: still time for play,
still not the end. There’s comfort in expectations kept,
so each shift and shadow’s a threat he can’t ignore.
Just a cloud. This time, he has no cause for doubt:
the sun doesn’t set, bath goes unfilled,
blankets wait cool and empty in his bedroom.
What happens when the story changes?
When the clouds won’t lift and the world burns
up to our doorstep, or the rushing grass
that cradles his feet browns to dust beneath them?
One day he’ll ask and I won’t be able to talk
the clouds away or point him to some bright bird
perched in our garden, or show him a garden at all.
How dark until he sees through any reason
to be born into a dying world, and will he die with it?
Day kaleidoscopes across our floorboards.
Night coming; we can’t blink it past.
—
Jocelyn Heath is an Associate Professor in English at Norfolk State University. Her first poetry collection, In the Cosmic Fugue, came out in November 2022 from Kelsay Books. Other creative writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Sinister Wisdom, Flyway, and Fourth River. Her book reviews have appeared at Lambda Literary, Entropy, The Lit Pub, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Editor for Smartish Pace.
