Quiet the Night

I was reading a piece this morning
that a friend, maybe drafted yesterday,
and posted online.

There is a phrase about laughter,
how it splays down the streets of the city
at 2:00 a.m.

I can picture that, the splaying, echoes
bouncing off dark buildings,
reaching, a hand, fingers of sound running
down empty streets, past idling traffic lights
blinking, unthinking
about fingers that can run –
I see them – in brown leather gloves,
smell that leather smell of musky mystery.

I remember times I’ve been alone
in the middle of the night
wandering streets, the insomniac walking dead,
mostly in Madison, listening
to the nearly nothing of my breath,
sometimes a whispering of soft wind,
perhaps my friend’s laugh recalled, losing
energy near the end of its journey,
and I’ll suddenly feel like the keeper
of that dying laughter, of diminishing wind,
and of losing dark,
all working, we together, hard against
the rival world of too much sound
that wakes and stretches, booming
rosy fingered dawn,
winning out, noisier and noisier

as it drags me
from the ruling of all that is silent night.

My friend may have written that line
for me alone.