D. Dina Friedman
We all want to leave this widening night,
this barking at the thing we can’t see.
–Peter Grandbois
Again, the light leaves us, sucks itself into itself
and disappears as I pull at the post-frost kale,
which is cold and tough on the tongue,
its edges brittle as fallen leaves.
Each day, the raked mountains of them
shrink to hills, then hillocks. The soil,
once soft enough to rain through fingers
now needs a spade to break the crust.
One day I’ll be shrouded here,
framed in my disintegrating box,
which will take longer than the leaves
to homogenize. Not like the light,
already slivered in the substrate of cloud,
its assertive moments of blue only a flicker,
receding as the night’s arms reach
into afternoon, reminding us our time
to do whatever it is we must do
requires seeing in the dark.
D. Dina Friedman’s short story collection, Immigrants, is forthcoming from Creators Press in 2023. She is also the author of one book of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press) and two young adult novels: Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux). Dina has published widely in literary journals including The Sun, Mass Poetry, Chautauqua Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Cider Press Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Cold Mountain Review, Lilith, Negative Capability and Rhino and received two Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry and fiction.
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