PoetryView
By Sam Pierstorff
Award winning ninja poet and MJC English Professor and Poet Laureate- ModestoView
Goodnight Moon
From outside the window,
it must look like a crime is underway:
late night, shades drawn, scattered light flickering like fireflies inside the room.
But it’s only my son lighting up every storybook page
with his new flashlight and stabbing my eyes with the sun-end of his plastic torch.
His aim is poor and the light skims the walls, ceilings, zips across the carpet like a swooping hawk.
We’re near the end of Goodnight Moon, where the old lady whispers “hush,”
and he lights her up— the old matronly mouse rocking in her chair—
a comb, a brush, a bowl full of mush within reach on her end table.
Then the picture book darkens as night grows older
and not even his new turtle-head flashlight can brighten these pages enough to stop
the slow fall of his eyelids past his eyes like the moon eclipsing the sun.
