A Beacon for the Darkness

On a warm night in autumn,
when the full moon, rising,
loomed behind the pine trees,
a new light, low in the cornfield,
began to flash on and off
as if it came out of a hand
that opened, closed, opened.

It was light that my own eye
created with each thud
of my heart,
flashing as the tissue of my eye broke down,
my own occulting beacon, open,
closed, open, more closed than open,

a blinking signal from the optic nerve as cold
as the moon on pine needles, a light
that made the coming darkness more than dark.