Never Night

You'd like it here where
it's never night, where the sun
circles, rather, until it ends
up where it started from,
east or west, rises, sinks
but doesn't ever set,
where in the summer
you never need to sleep
and all day and all night
the sky is a series of blues
you've seen only once before,
blues van Gogh painted
at the end. Where all the traffic
is fox and moose and bear,
where aspen and birch
bud and leaf all in one day,
and your sleep, when sleep
finally comes, is innocent,
spring wind through a window
left open now that spring
is passing fast and summer
won't stay here long before
the snow sweeps any green
away again and then it's always
night. You'd like that too, when
endless night falls and the moon
comes up, reads your book over
your shoulder, learns which dead
poet moves you tonight,
when any heat at all rises,
and becomes a visible thing.

--Derick Burleson