They come at night—
the old ones from those agency prisons and boarding schools.
They walk the sky carrying northern lights.
Maybe they’re looking for a road.
Maybe they’re hungry for turtle meat.
Maybe they want to pick up a rock or just smell the earth.
They shake their heads— Why haven’t we learned it right?
They can’t leave us alone, or let go.
They’re meddlers. Interferers with the lights.
Here— over this way— put your thumb in our socket—
see how you dance to this new light.
Diane Glancy is a long-time writer. The words, “We must be sparing,” came from her Aunt Martha who lived through the Depression. Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her latest books: Island of the Innocent, a Consideration of the Book of Job (2020), A Line of Driftwood, the Ada Blackjack Story, (2021), Home Is the Road, Wandering the Land, Shaping the Spirit (2022), “Psalm to Whom(e) (2023), Quadrille, Christianity and the Early New England Indians (2024), The Cubist and the Lost Notebooks of the Painter’s Wife (2025), and Lazarus, the Intended Writings, forthcoming in 2026.
