Going Dark

It’s subtle, how evening puts
itself away—the sky fading into white,
summoning the last bird home.

Houses, trees, power lines
huddle close together in black silhouette.
Darkness floods the ground.

Yet pausing on the porch steps,
I feel no urge to go inside and settle
for a book by lamp light.

Out here, there’s so much more
with night-opened eyes slowly turning
black pages in the album of stars.

 

 

Ron Stottlemyer lives in Helena, Mt. After a long career of teaching and scholarship at colleges and universities, he is returning to his love of writing poetry. His work has appeared in Alabama Literary Review, The Sow’s Ear, The American Journal of Poetry, Streetlight Magazine, Stirring, West Texas Literary Review, Temenos, South Florida Poetry Journal, Twyckenham Notes, Split Rock Review, and Rust and Moth, The Worcester Review, and most recently The American Journal of Poetry has accepted another poem for publication. One of his poems, “Falling,” originally published in Twickenham Notes, won a Pushcart Prize and will appear in the 2020 edition of the prize poems.