Night Lodging
Richard Luftig
​
The sun has called it a day
and checked into lodging
for the night while a winter
moon, muffed in clouds,
looks for where it might
set up new quarters.

And down below, in these
soy fields and corn rows,
outliers of houses look
to stars to fill in gaps of lives
once filled but now straggling
along like an unwanted but not

quite forgotten memory.
At the bottom of each, long drive,
floodlights protect barns and sheds
from intruders that folks fear
might encroach but who never
appear. Graveled and macadam

roads lead nowhere in both
directions toward towns where
streetlamps on corners, with nothing
left to light, save for boarded-up
stores, look skyward trying
to find their sure way home.