Kentucky’s Valleys

by Mark Alan Williams

 

Black it spoons
moon like a melon
leaving light
a pocked rind
of
ancient dust.

The moon
was in space,
so we thought and thought
we were
on
earth

But I’ve seen the valleys
and breaks
of Kentucky
open like
a
blouse to the enormity of night.

God, I fear the revelation
the sharp spoon
of godless space
slipping its curve
into the
hollows of our souls

Fitting its emptiness to ours.
I feel how it threatens
to crater us down
to wet husks
of
matter and air

So even in summers
we sleep
sheltered
under
thin
blankets

Hiding away from the
catastrophic weight
of night,
its years of
nothing
falling on us.