This night's
dulled illuminations
the tally, the loss
There, crickets working overtime
the long hours.
Night settles in darkened pits below the
thick branch, where the toads are
Funny! Fireflies do not ignite themselves,
do not explode out of one life into one speck
of ash dying toward toad's leap.
An abdomen by child's hands removed
makes jewel for forehead--
the moths are at the screen.
A river flows through this night
pushing
heavy.
A leaf sails in wind above the narrow sloping bank,
touches, holds for a time, consenting, is gone
in the current. A ship without oar, with one eye
tracing it to the calm where the ship takes its crew:
a beetle and a catamaran spider hurry to the cup.
In the calm, where the river gives away its rule
the leaf listens, speaks as it uncurls in the damp
its edges brown from caterpillars teething
flattens, sinks
the trace is left to the spider who lingers
as the beetle noses off to the carcass of a fawn.
If this night's ceiling was invaded by a sudden sun,
it would only frighten the animals.
One exists in this place in terms of what is not revealed.
I am below water... searching... for the eye of the fish
that does not swim, am with this night that knows not malice
but the malicious; conceals in blind equanimity the same
from the king as the criminal... who cannot steal the shadow
that is not first given...
I see the tree that gave up it's leaf and see the wide black trunk
fork above its shadow...
The body starves, I am the hunger, the body starves, I am...
The body starves, I am the hunger, the body starves, I am...
Becoming night, the night loses nothing
and I become weary, old, a fireman, We,
unredeemed, late and King...
lost and found and the name of a town in Arizona, somewhere off the interstate
Ezra, Ezra, Ezra....
even as the cock cries "Morning!"
Reason for writing:
stillness of night, a frightening imagined universe, the
redeeming quality of the night, and of simple things..
Yet the ego rages, "I am the hunger..."... until dawn...
Birth sign: Capricorn
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