Dear Midnight

by Jill Crainshaw


Dear Midnight,

Who do you talk to
when the wrens and robins
go quiet in a storm?
You know, when lightning
strikes every city in every land 
and ignites down deep darkness?

The tiny terrier and I
cock our heads—
She growls down deep 
in her belly suspicious 
at not hearing electricity
scurry through the house.

Rain tiptoes toward us
then chases us home,
silken hair flying out behind her.
She slips in with us as the
door slams with a sonic boom
and a single metallic flash of light—

Silence sidles in too,
scampers off into corners
and down deep into crevices
and we all peer out the window
at a sky homesick for stars.

Dear Midnight,

Can you tell us what it all means?
You, who wander fields and forests
seeking the fierce feeble embers
of once-fiery mornings—

The tiny terrier and I cock our heads.
Out there—
in the dripping down deep darkness
a train whistle melts 
into the rain-slick trees 
and a barn owl queries the night. 


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Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.