Short Lived

The night was brief, its black tent
threatened to fly away from the sunset,
Stars gleamed naked, then hid in a half-light.
Between the glimmer, night ran as if hunted.

No one thought this a good sign.
No one blessed the fleeting dark,
no one praised the lingering and early light.

We saw the cornered eyes of backyard critters,
how they backed up into imaginary dens.
We saw the exhumed moon
laid out as it was like a corpse.

We saw it all, and no one mentioned
the neonatal, the premature arrival
of that stillness.