Nightbook
A decade and the small world in chrysalis
Hatches from hunger to hungerless wings
Hungerless flight yes, saturnid yes, sulfur
(Or, from the nest at night) yes, passerine
Horizon betrothed to horizon rings the whole
World’s arching circumference the same curve
As of your curving eye, and both will blink
Shut, both will blind, will be blind—
Here on midnight waters, some stars still burn,
Some still burn, devoted to the blank
Surface they mar. Pray quiet but cannot be
Quiet as rose
Petal of quartz in stone. No finger in the ore-deep dawn
No dawn No down at wingtip No dawn
Save the furthest star on this water glowing
A clear devotion speaks to us this clearly
Love not principle Love not geometric
All night the heavenly angles sing loose
Their acute labor, Orion’s arrow at a sparrow shot,
The north star longing to betray north, the moon
Veiled from luna, hidden from moths, this world
This chaos in my mouth I love you
With such shadow, such silence
wife
Put out those stars
Wet wing against the water brushing
[first published in The New Republic]
