Summer Night-Dakota

JANELLE MASTERS is a North Dakota native and a lifelong poet, having come upon the poetry of William Wordsworth at age ten in an attic. Since then, she has stored the beauty and anguish of the world in her inward eye and writes from that source.

And one night when I

Was in high school

I stepped outside

And I looked up

To see the sky filled up:

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With caverns and chasms of deep, dappled light

Burgundy, gray, and silver leapt in the night

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Jade, sage, gold, in the west dark silken red

Maroon, lavender, in the east black velvet like jet

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Purple cliffs trimmed in candle light

Green rays slicing the night

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The northern lights, the aurora borealis

But really so much more than that is

-

This night they were prisms of thunder

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My soul saturated with wonder

My mind and my body split asunder

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And that night a miracle occurred

The earth became more than just dirt

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My mother in the house alone and crippled

And had been so since I was just little

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That night I was imbued with power

And I knew this, this was the hour

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I ran inside and swooped up my mother

And carried her over the threshold like a lover

-

We gazed into the skies

We glimpsed paradise

-

Heaven echoed in the breeze

And it soughed through the trees

-

Was Joan of Arc again burning

Was Jesus returning

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We were overcome with the glory

Of the universe over pouring

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Then my mother strong as death

Said with her silent breath

-

She uttered these words

The most powerful I’ve heard:

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Take me inside my dear take me inside

It’s too much pain for me outside

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It’s not my body, not my bones

Just take me back in so I can be alone

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For I am in such pain—it’s not the night air

It’s the beauty...that I can’t bear.

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And yea I have reached my eighth decade

And the memories of the words don’t fade

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For all of my days

I’ve searched for a way

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To get that deep inside

And to feel that much alive