a night in september
I have traveled hundreds of miles
to spread my sleeping bag in this empty field.
​
I have watched a crescent floating overhead,
a wooden cradle on the river.
​
I have left the war-torn terror of the city
to listen to the wind soothing the grass
​
on a crisp night in September
in a new century.
​
I have traveled so far
for a fleeting moment of peace
​
in starlit sleep,
charmed, beckoning . . .
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The ground pillows my head,
the sky blankets me.
dusk
The sun is going down tonight
like a wounded stag staggering through the brush
with an enormous spike in its heart
and a single moan in its lungs. There
​
is a light the color of tarnished metal
galloping at its side, and fresh blood
is steaming through its throat. Listen!
The waves, too, sound like the plunging
​
of hooves, or a wild hart simply
crumpling on the ground. I imagine
there are hunters beating through the woods
with their scythes and their tired dogs
​
chasing the wounded scent, and I suppose
there are mothers crying out for their children
in the fog. Because it is dusk. Yes,
dusk with its desperate colors of erasure,
​
its secrets of renunciation, and its long
nightmares beyond. And now here is the night
with its false promise of sleep, its wind
leafing through the grass, its vacant
​
spaces between stars, its endless memory
of a world going down like a stag.