Lamp Light

Moonbeams filter through the fall foliage,

Illuminating the heavy-tread dirt
Dotted by deeply ensconced footprints
—Remnants of the last rainy day
That quenched the thirsty road
Ages upon ages ago.

Lampposts drench the ground,

Spreading garish light over every scar
—Every imperfection the dusty road would hide
Within the comforting folds of night.
Exposed, it recoils beneath our footsteps,
Ashamed of the spider-veins
Etched along its dry, crackling surface.

But the harsh inorganic glow masks the stars,

Painting them in solid pitch
—Black
Upon black
Upon black,
A solid ribbon stretching across the horizon,
Casting the sky in its own image—
Mechanical uniformity.
The cold subservience of form to function.

A million voices cry out to us

And are silenced by the overpowering noise of progress.
Gears clank;
Foghorns rant and rail,
Drowning feeble seagull cries.
The night is robbed of her mystery
And left to weep,
Tattered clothes flapping in the breeze.

Yet, millions upon millions of miles away,

The stars shine on,
And when the last lamppost has been snuffed out,
When the last light-bulb’s incandescent glow has sizzled,
Sputtered and sparked to cinder,

Their ancient song will fill the night sky once again,
Flowing over the flowered fields,
The ancient canyons and crags,
The wild insurmountable wilderness
And the moss-covered crumbling mass
Which is the last footprint,
The last relic
Left to bear witness
To the proud primates,
Who took axe and hammer,
Mortar and brick,
In hand to tame the mighty vastness
That gave them birth.