The next time the power fails,
as it will, watch how the world switches
on the light of surprise,
bids us remember the primal reign
of darkness. Before you feel
for matches, sit, watch the shadows,
and listen for what you’ve never
heard— creaks and moans and stirrings.
Consider how deer
each night seek safe places,
how owls search
a moonless sky and obscure landscape
to feed their holy hunger,
how trees each day back into darkness,
make promises. Then,
let the night inside your body point
to what you need most:
that which circles your bones in mystery.
—
Kathleen Kimball-Baker is a poet and dog-sledding enthusiast in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poems appear in Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Pangyrus, Welter, Abandon, two anthologies, and other journals. She’s a three-time finalist in the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series for creative nonfiction and fiction and is compiling a hybrid chapbook about being a biracial Latina dog sledder obsessed with extreme cold and wilderness.
