the moon falling into a well
and not coming out
an 18-wheeler on an exit ramp
gargling with compressed air
the owl’s open eye
the owl’s closed eye
the hypothetical fact of a fox
a rumor of a coyote
the skillet under two eggs
sunny side up
familiar recorded music
the bits that still surprise
my heel where i landed hard
on a sharp stone yesterday
snag of a hemlock
its roots becoming tunnels
the moon over my shoulder
is already half-lit
i turn my hand palm-up
it fills with starlight
flying squirrels scold
in an ethereal key
i’m sitting beneath their
favorite mother oak
i take a deep breath
of autumn soil fragrance
a whitetail buck grunts
more as if in pain than in lust
there’s a thunder of hooves
then nothing
a dead leaf drops
into my hand
insects of smoke
slick as silkworms
weaving their own
winding sheets
a warmish night brings
them out again
those that still chirp
those that still trill
out of sheer habit
by now i suppose
i remember one of
today’s enigmas
i was waved at
by a dead leaf
attached to an unrelated
dead tree
full moonlight at half strength
due to rain
a slow and seemingly deliberate
tapping on the roof
one of the last warm
end-of-summer nights
katydids singing this is it
this is it this is it
this night with its singular pelage
will never come again
let sleep go on without you
like a zombie apocalypse
flying squirrels open
the dark sails of their bodies
a spring peeper calls three times
in defiance of the season
north has lost its allure
to the great unsettling
mist lingers later in the day
storms smell like the tropics
the sun cedes ever more
to thieving ravens
and shimmering on a far shore
that magnetic field
traveling so light
even the songs stay behind
but home has grown
beyond elaboration
mountains don brighter plumage
berries ferment like sunsets
first a mellow burn
then the whole of the night sky
All the while i sat watching the rocks, a spider was right behind me mending her web, knowing i offered protection from the birds. You’re never as alone as you think. I hear water trickling underground, remember that fateful drink and grin. It’s not so lonesome i could cry. And when i do, it’s just to talk back to coyotes, or that family of barred owls who hoot like chimpanzees. When the sun goes down, the hollow turns strange. Jumping mice dance in the moonlight. A whippoorwill clears his throat three times before he launches into his diatribe. Corpses of trees glow with foxfire and flying squirrels whistle high and thin like ghosts—whose ghosts, one can never be sure. Once i found a green stone that had been worked, given an edge that could still scrape a hide. It fit so easily into my hand. It took all my willpower to put it back into its hole. The original owner might not be done with it yet.
a porcupine puts
one foot in
As the crescent moon ripples and breaks apart, the mountaintop pool suddenly seems cavernous, its tree reflections trailing into the abyss. I stand to leave and the illusion passes. A bat nearly the same shade of darkness as the forest careens in and out of vision. The short path to the woods’ edge seems to have doubled in length, but this of course is another illusion. As is the bobcat quality of that snarl I just heard from the spruce grove.
The night makes everything grow: half-seen, fuzzy outlines dissolve, and the darkness itself becomes the only upward limit on size. Names and identities we wear by day become as loose-fitting as nightgowns or pajamas.
pond the size
of a table for four
spring peepers
the distant cry
of a migrant gull
frantic wings
against the window’s
good night moon
I remember how I talked myself out of my fear of the dark at age eight. Or did I? I’ve never been able to watch horror movies — I don’t want those sorts of monsters running loose in my imagination. There are enough real monsters in the news, I say to myself.
flickering
through skeletal trees
the bat’s back story
sunset
lava
on all screens
swamp tree
parodied by
its reflection
holding it
under
fire trucks
one after another
into the sunset
porcupine
grazing at dark
going to burn
in the burnyard
a dog would save me
worse than my last
night’s mouth
the corn-ordinary world I scorn
being infinite as
my desire of seeing
in and with the night
I talk with the passion
of a nonconformist
yet wish for quiet
my tune is a tune
of night and knot
swearing at all the roaches in the world
I am on the whole
a fool to see things ordered
so unlike gentlemen of reason
December night. Meteors streak
through the bare crowns of oaks.
I watch the sky as if it were the sleeping face of a dreamer.
All that blazing action without a sound!
And the longer I look, the more unfamiliar it becomes,
wholly itself & yet possessed. Wild. Vulnerable.
I want to be present the way an oak is present
& stretch empty arms into the void.