Dave Bonta's "Carpe Noctem" (seize the night) is about choosing to stay up and pay attention to one particular evening at summer's end. The details are small and sensory: dim moonlight filtered through rain, a slow tapping on the roof, katydids repeating "this is it," a lone spring peeper calling out of season, flying squirrels gliding into the dark. The speaker treats each one as evidence that this night is unrepeatable.
The mood is hushed, alert, and quietly joyful. The odd line about letting sleep go on "like a zombie apocalypse" is playful, picturing sleep as something that stumbles along without you while you stay wonderfully awake. There's also a gentle ache underneath, since the season is ending and the night "will never come again." The poem closes with the speaker breathing in the smell of rain on earth, which the poem calls indescribable. It feels like a decision to be fully present, with the whole body, rather than to explain the moment.