A Night's Work

I stood with the others, gathered as we were around the back of the truck.  Ian stood above us on the lift-gate with his hands outstretched.  A denim clad profit.  The sky was just starting to show a pink hue.  None of us had slept the night for the sake of a few dollars.  He put on his theatrical tone and waved an all encompassing gesture over us saying,

Tonight, we have learned some things.  And we have lost some things.

This was in the parking lot of an abandoned Captain D's.

Sometime around midnight, I had been standing within a thick mist that had settled abruptly at sunset.  Light shot through in harsh angles from unseen sources and made the fog glow with a disharmonious gravity that was as empty and intangible as the vapor itself.  You Dark Night, behind your vale, why do you try to take from us our imitation suns!  Why do you blot out the stars we make for ourselves?  See how even now they pierce your shield and make hopeful our hearts! The night could not answer, for the wind had been gathered into its storehouse and even our voices were swallowed up in the gloom.

Away in other lands, there was truly a winter that could be felt, and held in the palms of hands.  Within the mist was but a chill, a skeletal form of something like a forgotten season.  We moved from that foggy den in a convoy; our headlamps cutting a fleeting course that disappeared behind us in an angry red glare.  Ian led us then, singing over the radio as was his want and his privilege.  I would have joined my voice with his, but my heart was ponderous with notions.  I feared the fog outside would steal my words. 

Hours later, as I drove away through breaking dawn, I wondered what I had learned.  I knew, at the very least, what I had lost.  Every night steals something from you unless you throw your soul before and run behind, grabbing fistfuls of life where it is hidden in moonlight, in starlight.  The mist had thwarted our dash, and we called upon God for His sun to right the wrongs of His night.
Brothers, from the same hands, and always at war.  

Moving towards home, the city lay spread out below me as the beams of day were sent,  fiery gold and full of strength.  All the caffeine was making my teeth clench and wild thoughts were swimming in my blood.  I wanted to write love letters, and then agonize never to send them. To go hunting for my lost poetry and take it all back to give to someone else.  As I mused, I looked to my left where the river bent and wound through the ravine and there!  There the the fog had retreated, hovering over the waters to drown the secrets it had stolen that night.  And at once, my heart was light as though a prayer.