Tonight, I was reading a few lines of Sara Teasdale’s in her volume of poems, Flame and Shadow. Her poems are always alight with vivid imagery, often of nature, and the few lines I read tonightabout night falling made me terribly homesick. Homesick for dusk at home, twilight in early soft June summers, or wintry landscapes and sunsets on snow.

Which in turn, both homesickness and poetry about the later parts of the day, made me think of a poem that I wrote when I was 17. This poem is not like Sara Teasdale’s poems in any way, but it always stirs a warm memory inside of me of late winter nights and a memory of my favorite thing to do as a child on those late winter nights: read in bed late into the night. (Come to think of it, it is one of my favorite things to do as an adult.)

The worst thing about reading in bed late at night was the fact that I did not have a lamp beside my bed. Why not, I am not sure, because I remember one year most of us got lamps for a Christmas present, but at the time I wrote this poem I lacked a lamp.

This meant that someone had to get out of bed and turn off the light before it was possible to go to sleep.

 Now, when you turn off the light as soon as you get up the stairs and then crawl into bed, there is no drama involved at all. But if you have been reading for hours, engrossed in your book in which you have just finished off the story of Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, or perhaps White Fang, or The Prophet, or At the End of the Spear, it is impossible for a young (or old) person with a fertile imagination to turn off the light in an ordinary fashion. For one, someone might have sneaked in under the bed while you were busy reading. Or, something, who knows what, might be waiting out there in the hall just as you reach the light switch…. really so many things could go wrong.

If my sister and I were sleeping in the same bed, then an argument would follow about who should turn off the light, and it usually turned out that the one sleeping closest to the light switch would turn it off, if nothing else for personal safety reasons since having the other person do it would mean that person could easily land on you on the expedited return trip.

But it was worse when you were sleeping by yourself. There was no moral support or expectation of a warm, living human being lying in the bed when you returned from the turning-off-of-the-light. All the worse if there would be.

So, this poem was born.

Late Winter Night

It’s late winter night

And the snow is falling

 Brushing over barren trees,

The night winds calling.

Inside the fire’s warm

And I’m snug in my bed

Curled up with a book

The covers to my head;

Lost in a story

Or buried in a rhyme

The hour has grown very late

But I’ve forgotten the time.

The clock strikes again

 And it’s time to say good night

 It’s time to put my book away

 Oh! But what about the light?

It’s only five feet away

 But might as well be a mile

Even though the way I do it

Takes just a little while;

So many terrible things

 Coud happen as I go

Like hands that grab for my feet

Or pinch my little toe.

Or after everything is dark

When I’ve turned out the light

Suppose I made a jump for bed

And didn’t aim quite right?

 So many things could go wrong

 But the thing must be done

 So, I gather up my courage

And out of bed I run!

Take a leap! Switch off the light!

Come diving into bed!

Snuggle down into the depths

Pull the covers over my head

Take a breath and check around–

I think- I think – I’m in one piece still

Even though I stubbed my toe

 And hit the windowsill;

 And then I curl up in a ball

And wrap the overs tight

Sleep is coming, I’m drifting out

 Oh, late, late winter night!

-January 2008

From Echoes of Eternity