Missing Night

© 2003 Gayle Broadbent-Ferris 

www.skyglass.com

‘Hey, where’s the night?’ I asked, looking about me in consternation. I couldn’t see it anywhere. It was gone.

‘Night doesn’t come here to San Diego.’ Rachel told me. ‘It never has, while I’ve been here, what, a year now? The many houses and blatting cars scare it far off, and all we have here is a day and then a false day, with purchased electricity, and a dim yellow glow over the horizon, never fading. There is no night.’

I put down my beer seriously.

‘That’s awful’ I said, and I meant it.

Everybody knows that stars count you, when they see you, and if you aren’t seen and counted? Why then, you fade. The shape you helped form, the precious constellation, it becomes valueless and drifts away, unmarked.

No one can navigate by you, without a night.

 

I decided to help and here’s what I did: When I was home again in Utah I went outside and looked up. Immediately stars fell over and under me, and bathed me, and clustered me round, and counted me thoroughly, yes, every one. The moon stretched impossibly far across the wide dark sky and toyed with falling clouds, and finally passed away over tall mountains, undamaged, uncaught, as I watched, and away.

Oh, the night—I saw it.

 

I opened the burlap bags and scooped up some night with a trowel and I’m mailing it to Rachel, there on Guava Avenue in San Diego, with clear instructions. When the night bags get there she’s to yank them open outside at midnight, so a portion of the valuable true night can spill out, and fall up and see you all there, and count you,

you— starved for night.

I think it will help.

 

 

THE END

 

July 29, 2003