Day After Thanksgiving at Oak Ridge C

Day After Thanksgiving at Oak Ridge C

By Alex Missall

Through bare trees, and over this bog

blackened at a dark edge, there was

the yellowish moon, cloud absolved, 

a cold languor felt, then sometime later,

my breaths that drifted in the dreamless

light of a headlamp while I sat up

inside a tent. 

Tiny frost bits were constellations  

blinking on tarpaulin walls, cosmos

I couldn’t connect. Dawn was light,

rising like a guest who had stayed

too long, in a house made of strange

stars, and the bright sky, after emerging

from my shelter’s opening, was a host 

with a terrible laugh.