Dave Bonta strings together short fragments, almost like entries in a nature notebook, that follow the hours from sunset into deep night. Bats, porcupines, coyotes, grouse, barn swallows and deer pass through, each caught in a quick, sharp image. Human things keep intruding: glowing screens, fire trucks, a quarry's glow, the hunter's jacklight. Nature and people seem to share the same dusk.
The speaker is a quiet, curious observer, sometimes playful and sometimes uneasy. Feeling for missing teeth among the stars, or sleeping under the sky as a quilt, makes the night feel intimate and a little vulnerable. Then the mood suddenly widens. The long passage about an angel with a flaming sword tending the cosmos like a gardener, and the question about chasing oblivion, hint at larger fears about life and extinction. Yet the poem ends calmly, with ripples left by a bat drinking from a forest pool. After all the big questions, a small, gentle trace is what remains.