STARK NIGHTS

Heard two dogs the other day, barking
at the sight of the sun. Awful and bright thing, they said, worried,
it kept following them around like a big ugly eye.
We can’t even look at it, one dog argued. This thing doesn’t know us, and how we live, or what
it’s doing by accident.
How it must hate us, living in its warmth, burning ourselves alive and going blind in its
aftermath.
The other dog said, it has done nothing wrong but survive,
turning in its sleep every night,
too cold to go but packing socks all the same. What we all ruin by accident, what we must do in
our sleep, muscles jerking like we were walking anyway.