And the Evening and the Day Was the First Day

And the Evening and the Day

Was the First Day

Nicholas Samaras

Read the fine print—
God created Night first,

light created out of darkness,
with the evening and the day

being the first day. Thus,
our liturgical calendar.

Then, all of our time left becomes
a personal preparation, a sleeping to wake,

an anticipation of rising,
a dreaming of time that becomes

the work of time, the pilgrimage into.
God created night to emerge from,

with light brought out,
where we rest and strive in time

to meet at the edge, the constant
moving to gather and then go.

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Nicholas Samaras
Poet

Nicholas won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his debut collection Hands of the Saddlemaker (1991). His most-recent collection is American Psalm, World Psalm (2014).

Photography by Alan Labisch