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# Veil
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/veil/
- Published: 2026-10-01T23:50:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:04:38.000Z
- Description: “Veil,” skirking the edge of light and dark on a winding drive home, written Thursday, October 01, 2026 poem 274 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Yin and Yang: Mulch meets Asphalt," by Diana Ludwick © 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Poems, Autumn, Bones, Canopy, Dusk, Fall, Forest, Navigational Hazards, October, skeleton, Smart Phone, Walkers, Woods, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

Steering wheel turns slowly,  
I aim away from navigational hazards.  
Captains fear icebergs;   
I'm more concerned  
for hidden children lurking in leaf piles.  
  
A smart phone-entranced walker  
meanders with a telling  
under-the-social-influenced waddle.  
  
A pair of leashed dogs dart close and far,   
stretching on their tethers in competing directions,   
unpredictably pouncing or stopping,   
never in tandem.  
  
The toddler girls down the street   
(who are now, somehow, in third grade)  
rush to the center of the road,   
then belatedly turn their heads right   
to bathe their retinas in my headlights.  
  
I crest the hill, and with my climb  
comes the plummy shroud of dwindling light   
a familiar, dark embrace of the forest,   
its encompassing, shielding canopy   
stretching over the evening, pulling dusk closer.  
  
On my left, gargantuan humeri   
emerge from a deciduous leaf-strewn yard.  
One pair of ulna and radius   
root down into the mulch exerting force.  
  
Its other arm upturned,   
its skeletal phalanges outreached towards the sky.  
Joining the woods in summoning the veil of night,  
my bony neighbor bids me adieu.