Still hunkered at my desk,
as if to stop the night sky brightening,
the Leylands lifting
from their winter canvas,
pastures, singed with frost.

Night is like a holiday,
I can do anything I want with it—

unlike the day’s gray needs,
pressing me
to rise from my photons of doubt
and my warm thinking chair
and do something.

As long as night lasts,
nothing needs to happen.
Goya had his candle hat,
I have darkness
to etch stray particles
on the backs of eyelids—
Night is mine

when the rest of the world
lies sleeping.