Too

Now they tell us we have overdosed
on light too, too much Edison, too
much neon, too much LED (which
it turns out, pollutes just as much

as any of the artificial stuff), too
much trespass and clutter, too much
glare and skyglow eating at night,

such a dangerous obesity of light,
disturbing to closed eyes, somehow
disrupting the quiet too, the evening
of ears, the warm womb of dreaming,
all the various purposes of darkness.

Aftermath

Last night when the rains came and overstayed
their welcome again, we remembered how it was
before the work was done, before the trenching
and tiling, before the redirecting of downspouts
and regrading, before the many calculations
conversations, and caulking, when the basement

had filled up with water, suddenly, more
than once, before our epiphany that the fix
was up to us, when we ran frantic for buckets
and hoses, mops, rags, and shop-vacs to curb
the rising and cursed the sump that couldn’t
keep up, and the flooding felt like justice, like

punishment for every promise we had ever
broken, every good deed we had left undone.