A bit of night, but not for sleeping.
A night for rumpled white hair resting on a wooden plank, in the dark, others breathing in a large room, who knows where and who knows why.
A night for tangled thoughts, firm beliefs, and enormous fears, challenges and defeats and sensations, firm and fixed at the center of the heart.
A night for a clean conscience, for a forehead held high, for a straight back, for convictions confirmed by everything that has happened; and a night for a troubled conscience over the suffering of friends, over the suffering of the patients left in uncouth, inexperienced hands.
A night for fears over the day to come, over the road that will lead far away, over the battles that will be left unfought.
A bit of night, what little remains.
A night for green eyes wide open, staring into the darkness, confronted by an emotion he didn’t know he’d been nursing.
A night for strategies and movements, a night for silence as images scream in his memory.
A night for searching after faces and names to trap in the mind, to be asked and even supplicated.
A night for fears over the day to come, over the lanes to be traveled, over the battles that will have to be fought
A bit of night, spent waiting.
A night for one hand resting on your chest, like every night, making sure you’ll still be there when she wakes up.
A night around your children’s beds, looking down on their perfect sleep, their mouths half-open before the clouds and stars and the future that your hands will know how to build for them.
A night for uncertainty, for weakness in the face of a friend’s potential pain and suffering, in the face of the silence that may surround him.
A night for fears over the day to come, over a steep climb to be undertaken first thing in the morning, over a battle that remains to be won.
As soon as this bit of night that remains is over.