NIGHT VISION

We sat hooded up
      against the cold,
 under a cap of night so
              black only starlight
     dappled our heads, and waited
for Walden to awaken, and if you
       blinked your eye, or a frog's

croak turned your
          head left or right, you
returned to find a total stranger,
        as if it were you who had died and
    were re-born, or perhaps it was
the pond playing hide-and-go-seek,
       running off a small boy

              and, seconds later, returning
a young man, and everything
      you thought you knew about
                time, or night, or ponds proved no
more solid than the fog, all burnished
          now, gilding Walden's
                                      surface.


5:30 am
October 9, 2003



All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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