Night Sounds on Mission Bay

Night sounds from a place near water, from a place where you can see many lights and the brooding silhouette of a eucalytus tree, turn one outward, to the streets and fields and hillsides, the marsh and cove and beach that form a spreading pool. With noisy breath stilled for but a moment in the throat, you float into this shadow pond, as gently and as wondrously as a new rowboat. And there, without oars, drifting without effort or ambition, you rise with the tide of a fluid night.

A seagull cry, the bark of a dog, the laughter of a girl across the bay slip through the mirrored surface without splashing; a cigarette flipped curving from your side is a meteor, and a night plane, flashing red and green high overhead, makes the roar of two planets chasing eternity.