On These Earthly Nights, Dorothy Nielsen (June 2026)

On These Earthly Nights

Perhaps she simply needs one tie –
just someone walking home at night
across his still and silent town
who in an instant is struck blind
by words he’s read, when in their light
baroquely braided wings reach down
through leafless elms, past midnight’s dome
that arcs above his human sight.
Her poem offers to surround
him. It might also be, till then,
he’d only lacked one verse that shone
its benediction, lacked the right
bright image flashed on inner lens
so he, too, finally feels at home
in exile on these earthly nights.