Long Night

On the longest night of the year
the sun struggles to rise;
and like a thief, it slides
the hood of night away without
so much as a sparkle.

Dawn sags in, with a blue-gray
pistol-light revealing
the frost-whipped ground.

Through the blackness of this
night, I
shuffle back through houses,
shackles, fields, stars of memory,
dungeon'd in secret years,
searching.