On the hilltop her lingering gaze absorbs night,
While I stir (restless sleep) she tracks each star’s swift flight.
Though unknown to me, this owl-eyed sentry’s deployed,
Guarding we huddling sleepers ‘gainst fears: dark, cold, void.

As the days grow e’er shorter, with oracular art,
her diurnal twin/sister, touchstones as her chart,
notes the placement and angle of dawn, and each nadir,
predicting this night light’s swift waning will waver.

Wielding faith against fears, these guards measure and scale
ancient stellate quadrille: will famed patterns prevail?
Shall tonight’s heav’nly reel countermand light’s fixed pace,
Such that day-ebb and night-surge stop, trade, then retrace?

Hail, night-sentry: cryptic, ingenious Nyx!
Since by Chaos inspired, my reason transfix
via slumbering visions which you weave from my core:
intuition, bless’d gnosis, and balance restore.

Salut, day-scout! Hemera, may your radiant light,
grow progressively stronger, and in scale morph my might
into actions redeeming, with grace and faith seeming,
that corporeate dreams into days with worth teeming.

Thus today’s annual transmute, harbinging Day’s blaze,
renews and blooms Hope as dawn fragments night’s haze.
Though I know not the means of this intricate strain
I divine unfeigned prospect of a world more humane.

As enrich I, then, gentle deep gifts of the night
with the warm, quickening hope of the strengthening light
it’s my heart’s greatest wish through my acts to wage peace:
both within and among us, may hate and fear cease.

Copyright December 21, 2006 Cal J. Domingue