At the Beginning of Dark

To point where the bodies come alive, where fireflies
gather now that it’s warm, imagining our own lives bending
as the grasses do now, recognizing, too, the fully knotted dance,
the summer’s foot-hold, the buried no longer bloom
held in this world a few weeks more than deserved,
to gasp at such brief light, at the circles and the bleared ring
left in air, to know we often feel the end of it all
and wish for better, to still our beings in the wilderness
of no and urge on and praise, to behold, to be holding
any small part, even ourselves, even as the night sweeps on.

Eric James Cruz is poet and high school teacher living in San Antonio, Texas. His most recent works have appeared or are forthcoming in 8 Poems, Carve, River River Review, and Black Napkin Press. Cruz is pursuing his MFA in poetry at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. Follow him @encodedmuses