Poetry

“Night at the Crest,” “grace sprinkled like dew,” and “You Weep”

by Russell Willis
Image
Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash

Night at the Crest

Starscape obscured by

countless swarming pixels with 14-inch wingspans;

but no tangible color                                             or form.

          No sound,                                           at least none perceived.

But there was something...

                    a presence felt.                     No, not felt.                  Not exactly;...

                    a presence known by reputation not senses, as mammal, not bird.

 

Gasping                                                                              not frightened or excited

                                                            just having forgotten to breathe.

Only as It fled down and into the desert

                   was a trembling of the heavens sensed; not unlike

                   the rustling of acre-upon-acre of corn or

                   wheat on eastern-Iowa farmland at dusk.

The rustling suddenly drowned by magnificent silence.

 

Who knew there are skies like this?

No suburban canopy of speckled dark

                     that signals “night” this teeming sky,

                     full of being, full of  light.

                                         Light not to see with

                                                             but to be seen,

                                                             to be witnessed.

                                                             to be paid homage to,

                                                             conversed with,

                                                             plotted with.

                                           Vision, not sight.

The air, thickened by the cold of deep space and desert void,

                  cut through fabric and skin,

                  rendering youthful muscle into cords of exquisite shivers.

Old, dying embers, once a crackling fire masquerading as a cook stove,

                  beckon to be kindled back to blazing youth.

As fuel is foraged then sacrificed to the fire, voices, not long ago

                  embarrassed by their crudeness and rustic music, begin to

                                       whisper and laugh

                                       with playful, childlike

                                        innocence and awe,

                                        as dancing shadows guard

                                        the redoubt from

                                        another assault of wonder.

grace, sprinkled like dew

there is no hating hate;

the act itself is fire.

not content to smolder

in petty or foolish indignities,

its lust consummated as

fuel and fuse consume each:

destruction its ousia and telos,

its heat metastasizes, old fuel

spawned as new fuse, awakened

as galloping wildfire

only to be reined in if quenched

at great cost and unpredictable effect.

but never to have been

untethered at all if

before hate is mated with hate, might

there be grace, sprinkled like dew...

what might have been fuel

free, to be, to live, to thrive

as the grass of a new dawn

or flower of the desert.

You Weep, and Yet

You weep, and yet your soul is dry.

The grief wasted on stupidity;

wasted on strings of foolish whims

youthful arrogance

wishful thinking masquerading

as dreams or plans;

unleashed to weaken and bruise

and break and poison

until only addiction remains,

and he but a shadow until

the darkness is complete.

Yet your heart remembers.

He knew and rendered love,

this blotted soul,

this muted life that once

flamed wild and true;

with a smile that melted hearts

and a joy …

It is that joy that

whispers in your aching mind.

And though he wastes away

before your eyes, that joy will

not be wasted on emptiness.

Your tears will flow

across your cheeks

and onto my shoulder;

true grief for a soul

that once knew joy,

but let it slip away.

And whether the darkness

wins or not this time,

these very tears, not wasted,

will clear a path for

hopes and loves,

and even griefs, to come.

About the Author

Russell Willis

Russell E. Willis writes from the borderlands where poetry meets philosophy, where technology presses against the human spirit, and where stories become a way of answering for the world we are making. Trained first as an engineer and later as a social ethicist, he has spent a lifetime tracing how technical systems shape our choices, our communities, and our sense of responsibility. His poems—over 300 of them—have appeared in journals and anthologies that prize clarity, honesty, and a deep attentiveness to ordinary life. His first collection, The Month the Baby Came, gathers these moments with a tenderness shaped by wonder and lineage. As an essayist and thinker, Russell writes about the moral pressures of the Polycene age, where artificial intelligence accelerates change faster than our institutions can understand it. His multi-volume series, Responsibility in the Age of AI, explores what it means to remain responsible, deliberate, and fully human inside systems that promise efficiency but erode agency. Whether writing poems or analyzing the ethics of autonomous technology, Russell moves with the same conviction: that language—carefully chosen, honestly offered—can slow the world enough for us to see one another clearly again.