Night Blight, a poem by Clint Wastling

Following the ancient road home,

down the dip slope of The Wolds

from Fridaythorpe to Wetwang.

The sky panoptic: stars, planets,

a diversity of heavenly bodies.

Any Parisi charioteers

would have seen more -

sky-glow from distant cities brightens,

night-blight renders the visible invisible,

a waste of energy, a waste of resources,

intruding into darkness, exposing daemons,

our folly a beacon illuminating all.

We see only hundreds out of thousands of stars

our ancestors knew by heart,

charting night skies without their constellations.

Clint's poetry collection is called Layers and is available from Tourist Information, Beverley. His scifi novel Tyrants Rex is published by Stairwell Books and is still available.