Concealed Beauty

What happens when night-time comes?
We retreat inside our houses,
turn on the lights,
try to drive away the invasive darkness.
Nothing outside
is able to hold our attention,
but there is concealed beauty
in the things we don't see.
If you were to step outside,
tune out civilization for a bit,
and look up,
you would see the sweeping pattern of the stars
and the infinite majesty of the heavens.
You would realize how vast
the universe actually is,
and behold all of the hidden beauty
that is only revealed
when the sunlight is banished from the skies.
Another hidden secret is
the stars that stretch out
across the ebony canvas
that is interrupted periodically
by the moon and its soft, gentle light.
Then the real treasures enter;
a shooting star, a meteor shower,
cosmic events that again remind us
that there is concealed beauty in plain sight.
All we have to do is look.

I love this poem. It reminds you to take a look around and notice God's wonderful creation and not to take it for granted.
Thanks so much for the reminder!

I think you have a very strong idea for a poem here, but I feel that your execution needs a little bit of work. I only noticed one major grammatical mistake. There should be a hyphen inbetween night-time. One thing you did well, however, was your imagery. Many of the images, like "invasive darkness" and "sweeping patterns of stars" were images i haven't heard described as you did here, so well done. Yet, some parts of the poem felt as if they were lacking a certain powerful trait. Such as:

We don't pay much attention
to anything outside.

I feel from a poetical stand point, this is a weak point in your poem. Since this line comes right after your line about invasive darkness, which to me was a very powerful image, and then the power faded when i got to this line, and i momentarilly lost interest. In my opinion, i think this line needs to be revised.

You have a very good ideal for a poem here, and with some revision, you could have a very good poem.

Keep Writing,
arspoetica

Here I am to review, line-by-line as I shall and altogether. This is going to be really choppy and nitpicky and grammatical, just a warning.

First few lines - I like how you started this off with a question. The way you followed it up, though, makes it seem like the question might be be better as "Where are we when nighttime comes?" The answer doesn't quite fit the question as eloquently as it might - switching the phrases around a little might help that. The next two lines are okay.

The line starting with "But there is" - Could this be "There is concealed beauty"? Or should you connect this to the line before with a comma instead of a full stop?

I feel like there's something missing between "in" and "things". Would "in the things we don't see" or "in those things" make the poem read more easily?

"[A]nd look up...." There should only be three full stops to an ellipsis, if that's what you're going for here, unless you closed the sentence first and then put the ellipsis. It's hard to tell, really.

"You would see" - okay, get rid of the ellipsis. It creates an unnecessary pause between looking up and seeing, and the poem doesn't read better for it. Change the ellipsis into a comma and you have correct punctuation.

"You would realise... and all of the hidden beauty." That makes no sense, putting it in a grammatical standpoint. You could create the second clause into an independent one and put a different verb in there (such as "see"), then put a comma after "is" to create more fluidity.

You have a similar issue in the next sentence: "The stars that stretch out... another hidden secret." The subject needs to match the verb, and the predicate needs to match the verb. It's simple, really.

"Then enter the real treasures. A shooting star, a meteor shower." The first full stop ought to be a colon, if you're describing the treasures as a shooting star etc., and the A before "shooting star" should be lowercase, just saying.

The ending is nice, with no real obvious problems. I like the message of night and calmness and things we don't see, but it's hard to get through the odd structure of the poem and the sentences. All in all, it's not bad, but it's not wonderful.

I really like this poem in general. I feel that most of the needed criticism has already been made. Howev, I would like to say that for such an unknown area of our knowledge, what with the universe and stars and things, I do like how you use free-verse for the poem, as giving a strict structure just wouldn't fit the idea. Thanks for sharing, and see you in marching band tomorrow.