How many nights
Have I awaited sunrise
Watching muted city lights dance
From windows of dark, rented rooms?
Seen green-tinted stars shimmer
Silently through shrouded sniper scopes?
How many moonlit vigils
Tracing the Aurora’s northern path
From frozen camps, hills and dales?
How many hours spent
Wandering lonely barracks halls,
And dorm stairwells,
And campus sidewalks
Willing the dawn to thrust
Its first triumphant streaks
Through the belly of an ink filled sky?
Waiting for so many different things,
Longing for some intimate unknown,
Like watchmen wait for the morning
–More than watchmen long for the morning