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"Civil Twilight"

By Terri WitekPosted Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at 7:20 AM ET

... the limit at which ... illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished.
—U.S. Naval Observatory

Click here to listen to Terri Witek read this poem.

At 6° under speak only with kindness.
At 12° trust buoys to gather the port.
At 18° swing doubt through its usual cold orbit.
Let a scratch in a song be love's cough in the dark.

Who arched the bridge to this island of flare-ups?
Which is the key to the hotel of dismay?
Nests blunt the junctions between river and ocean.
I suppose we have done with our mutual heat.

As horizons melt into more vivid disclaimers
or choose from a shoreline's stubbed-out streets,
let go the gold ways you thought nothing then nothing.
Think nothing forever when you get to my name.

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Terri Witek is author of Carnal World and Fools and Crows as well as Robert Lowell and Life Studies: Revising the Self. She teaches at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla.

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