Drawing out the Night

Just stumbled across this poem I wrote a while back, and it seemed to fit:

What do you do to draw out the night?

Is it muted voices swimming in the elastic blue flicker, quivering against your shadowed walls?

Is it wandering city streets, the buildings’ crystalline hive, watchful, the occasional pedestrian hurried?

Is it a dark and indifferent dive, thick, sweating glass resting against the curve of your palm?

Or a bright, clean station, redolent of meat and caffeine, cool enamel beneath your waiting palm?

Is it driving, driving swiftly through silent suburban streets, yellow streetlamps flitting overhead?

Is it your bed, your head inclined against a pillow cool, eyes slanted, the soft periodic shuffle of switching paper?

Why the long wait to turn out the light?

What do you do to draw out the night?


--Robert Stribley, 01/02