The Islands

The nightly blurring of land
and sky signals
the islands of green fir
and brown limbs. They
hesitate in twilight to
watch the wind turn
over fields.

Another signal must
cause their stumbling
forward across dead grass borders,
through uneven dirt until
yellow rows of stubbed
cornstalks check their
clumsy escape. To us,
they walk forward, passing
the car, getting smaller and
stopping.

Our colored steel island
with the moving forms
of shoulders and heads merges
and disappears as molecules
of night invade, gathering inside
to form safe and dark.

Where did it come from?
This absolute trust, this
false sense of safety in heavy
wheels and steel coats.
We convince ourselves
we can move fast enough,
to outrun mysteries and fear,
and leave behind black.