Sarah Donkin
Light Pollution
When I drive at night,
headlights speed towards me
and my car rocks in the wind tunnels
left behind. On my way to the home I
claim out loud, just so it starts to feel a little less overcast,
I don’t think to count the street lamps
rushing by and glaring
against my windshield, because the light is
bouncing off of the street, the windows, the power lines, my glasses,
instead of illuminating.
bouncing off of the street, the windows, the powerlines, my glasses,
instead of illuminating.
Sometimes I forget that
midnight on a city street
is not the same as midnight in
the middle of a hayfield,
where the closest street lamp sits
burned out at the top of a hill.
When I pull into a nearly-full lot,
I don’t think to count the cars
lined up in front of bulbs glowing from
rows of radiant apartment windows above,
but I can’t forget
looking up at a luminous sky in the middle of the parking lot
and realizing that the stars were hiding from me
somewhere in a field far away.