“Song for a Moonlit Night”
by Kellan Sparver

Do you get lonely

Late at night when the skies are low
Fireflies down and the west wind slow
Animals quiet, stars around you
Moon shining over the fields

Late at night my city lights burn
Pavement washed in a sodium glow
Revelers stumble under my window
Stars of their own favorite show

Do you know

There’s not a lot I miss about you
Accidents, missteps, the odd backward glance
An accent, a word, a face in the mirror
Awash and adrift as the people rush past

I know that you don’t think on me often
Never much wanted me, when I was there
You have your people, your old friends all gathered
They never left, that shows how they care

It’s okay; you didn’t know what I was
If you had known, you’d never have dared
It’s better this way, each of us elsewhere
No one is hurt; your feelings are spared

The city’s not you, as hard as I want it
Every reminder returns me to this
I’m not what I’d be and I’m not what I once was
How long can anyone live within glass

Where am I going? Where have I gone?
Will you be there to meet me?
Where am I going? What will it cost?
When I am there, will you greet me?

Do you get lonely

Night wind cries and the green corn sighs
The crickets are singing the eternal song
The horned moon brushes the horizon
You lie on your rooftop, awaiting the morn

Late at night my lights still burn
The sleepless birds sing up the sun
The quiet lingers where the people aren’t
It waits with patience until they return

My own moon fades against the day
The houses stir as brightness rolls west
The unseen ocean rises and falls
I go inside to face the new day’s test

Do you get lonely
Do you get lonely
Do you

This began as an attempt at song lyrics, as the title suggests, but I like it as well as poetry.  Feels appropriate to post on a quiet, sticky night in Boston, very much the kind of night which inspired it.

(I’m experimentally cross-posting to Tumblr, if that’s your thing.)

Copyright © 2015 Kellan Sparver. All rights reserved.

The cover image is “Milky Way over Iowa″ by Kenneth Younger III on Flickr, used under the terms of its Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license. The image is used for illustrative purposes only. All persons depicted are models, and no endorsement or association is intended or implied.