Poem to be read at 3 a.m.
Excepting the diner
On the outskirts.
The town of Ladora
At 3 a.m.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking.
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on
Commentary
This poem was submitted independently by two readers in response to yesterday’s offering (statius’ ‘to sleep’): Howard Weinberg and William Schubert :
from “Night Light”.
[Howard’s comments]
Two things I like about this poem: the way it acknowledges the brotherhood of those who are not asleep; and the way it captures that midwestern gothic feeling, which is not at all about dentists with pitchforks, pace Grant Wood, but is about frail cones of light shimmering in the prairie darkness.
It is plain, elegant, spare, devastating and, somehow, redemptive. Read it again.
[William’s comments]
I am not an insomniac. My brain typically shuts down around 9pm and I get up for meditation around 4:15 so I have little understanding of insomnia however grateful I am that I don’t suffer it. My social life has always been a bit truncated by my lack of enjoyment of anything that happens after 10pm.
But, I feel the voices in this poem. I think it is because something in me travels in the night. I’ve been on the road through Ladora. Otherwise how could I so readily recognize the landscape of this simple poem. My life (all of our lives) zip along at 70 and it is so difficult to be aware in the present tense of that single light we passed, that single person who was by the roadside, that single soul existing in the periphery of our vision. Except in memory and regret at having not been sufficiently in the moment to connect with that other sentient inhabitant of our world.
I read this poem for the first time in high school. It touched me then and has haunted me ever since. I’ve heard the sound of those tires on the streets of Ladora in the back of my mind for thirty five years. And I have more than once looked up and seen a lighted window and sent a thought there. Not alone. Not alone.
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Sandra L Christenson · 5 September 2003
I, too, love this poem. I’m going to use it in my class. It’s so accessible and powerful simultaneously. All is well between Gracie and me. The teacher offered $20 a week (flat rate) and last night’s grading took her over two hours, which was not bad, but Gracie was up until midnight with her other homework and that was the first week of school. She took a friend and told Ms. Selig that she didn’t have time to grade any more papers, but thank you. She also told her the job caused strife at home. Amen. Gracie is the kind of girl who, like a teacher, gets sick the last week of the semester when everyone else is partying and relaxing. She already babysits and tutors. It’s too much.It’s a curse to be too good a girl, is it not? S
Martin DeMello · 5 September 2003
Beautiful, beautiful poem. I agree with both Howard’s and William’s comments - this poem is not about insomnia at all, but rather about the sense of disconnection, the lonely isolation both of the single house with the light on, and the lone car passing it at seventy miles an hour. Each a glimpse, and gone forever.
martin