The Daze of Night

 

For Sarah

 

As evening came up

from the valley, and the day, with its clouds,

Slid away from the crowds toward the west, we danced on the grass

rough dances sweet as thyme and the beat grew deep

As mines and our bodies reclaimed our minds and made them one library

 

Of love. The moon was a sloop

that trawled planets from their moorings in the dark,

And we kissed on the grass till it shamed the stars

From their pantsuits and bras, and we among the thousands

were the chosen two.

 

We raised heaven in our steps

and stayed there, and the night,

Among the vines, chose never to end. You are beautiful, they said,

The others, their words simple and true and desirous.

Ours a gilded wilderness they wished

 

They once had known. Baby,

we should be forever, she said, as we were

Driving home; for a while, at least. Until you’re very old;

And, baby, don’t you ever go growing old.

 

This morning, on waking, my mind,

for a time, grew dark and dropped me

Into that turbid stream of thought, where I’ve drunk too little

And sunk too much; but a new gentleness,

rising in me these days,

 

Like the almond green moon last night,

older than all things, said no. There is the given

World, and its surface is very deep, and it will hold you now,

It wants to hold the two of you like time in its hands,

and it doesn’t know how to let go.

 

 

So while you sleep, I walk down to the dam,

and I find the morning there: a dragonfly, a fallen sky,

And the water a palette of weed. In the rising heat,

Thinking of snakes, moving like a monk,

I frighten a coot from the reeds.

 

And she runs into flight

across the impasto of the pond

The same way we flew the future up from the ground last night,

And made it lovely in dance.