When light sleeps

The cosmos is normally a tumultous place
full of furious exchange,
Stars are truthful,
perhaps galaxies are gracious.
One living planet promises
nothing.
I don't know if there's another one;
it's not likely.

I have the sense that fire in the belly of
our birth is merely a brief reminder of
moving memories.
Not of the sentimental kind, no;
the finger points always to somewhere
I dread. Again and again in dreams,
light wakens, and the body tries to sleep
with certainties that slope towards those really
awkward places.

I live in ships that try to sail, on planes circling
impossible landings, and in faces I know that have
forgotten me.

I should remember that sometimes
light sleeps.

I've walked often between midnight and morning.
What I've heard then tells me that sometmes
light sleeps.

And in the quietness of whispered messages in
mornings to come, there's a story of how
light sleeps.

It's not a secret, nothing ever is.
It's just that in the quietest earth of all,
in special places, one of which I know,
light sleeps.