After Nightfall – a poem by Daniel Klawitter

After Nightfall

Writer’s block is another name for writer’s dread.
—Barbara Kingsolver

The birds were weeping in the rotunda
While the statues grew wings in the moonlight.
If only St. Columba could see me now—
Staring into the proverbial abyss
Trying to discern the lines I should write
Or sing in the park on this incorporeal evening. 
I must insist: my insistence was misplaced.
For what have I learned on this lark? 
That to be bereaved is not to be bereft.
And eventually, the words will be received:
They will arrive as if they had never left. 
 

Daniel Klawitter is a member of The Colorado Poets Center, the lead singer/lyricist for the indie rock band Mining for Rain, and an Admissions Counselor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. His last full-length book, Where Sunday Used to Be: New and Selected Poems (Wipf and Stock, 2022), won the 2023 Colorado Author’s League Book Award for Poetry.