Poem to Be Read If It’s Night Where and When You Are Right Now – a poem by Matt Zambito

Poem to Be Read If It’s Night Where and When You Are Right Now


My advice? Stay up later: it’s not late enough 
unless the moment feels—with a tiny twinge 
of fight-or-flight-or-freeze—too dangerous
for wakefulness, unless you get a sudden shiver 

energizing along your nerves, a shocking 
bolt of electro-jolt realizing what concocted 
hour, minute, second you find yourself in since 
units measuring moments are human made, 

are totally tied to our far-out Sun-revolving rock,
are relative to each earthling, so no one tells 
the same time as another. When it’s then, go 
outside and stare up at the Moon (or the place 

in the sky where it should be) beside intergalactic 
spangles, and count your lucky stars, and hold 
your breath, and take a blink of comfort, aware 
you’ll need to give our Cosmos comfort in return.

 

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities (Cherry Grove Collections), and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances (Finishing Line Press). Other poems have appeared in Poetry International, North American Review, Writers Without Borders, and elsewhere. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, and Washington. He now writes from Wilson, New York.