“Nature’s Night Games”

by Matt McGuirk

Driving roads by the pale yellows of headlights,

down paths that deserve no sign or pinned spot on google maps. 

Trails where trees reach out and touch the fresh paint of the car

like bony joints of skeletons or sharp claws of black cats. 

Roads where clipped fall leaves swoop like wings of a bat or crow

and wind slides through cracks in the stand 

making the car shiver against its draft. 

Fall wanes and soon winter will spit a 

spinning kaleidoscope of snow, 

just another trance thrown by nature’s night games. 

Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee with words in various lit mags and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities available on Amazon and linked on his website: http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew