Miriam Levine: Daylight Savings

There’s more light than anyone would need.
At six o’clock the sky is bright.
I have my friend’s last poem to read.
 
Children wanting to stay longer plead
for more pleasure.  Drifting clouds are white.
There’s more light than anyone would need;
 
still the iron lamps overhead feed
the humid air with a surfeit of light.
I have my friend’s last poem to read.
 
Basketball players, half naked, speed
gleaming like wakened statues in flight.
There’s more light than anyone would need.
 
Bicycles flash by with Chihuahuas carried
in baskets.  Banal—but say it!  All is finite.
I have my friend’s last poem to read.
 
The grass is as lurid as AstroTurf.  We’d
see better with blackness to clear our sight.
There’s more light than anyone would need.
“Time,” she sighed . . . forever . . . unhurried.

Copyright 2019 Miriam Levine