True Night

Sheath of sleep in the black of the bed:

From outside this dream womb

Comes a clatter

Comes a clatter

And finally the mind rises up to a fact

Like a fish to a hook

A raccoon at the kitchen!

A falling of metal bowls,

the clashing of jars,

the avalanche of plates

I snap alive to the ritual

Rise unsteady, find my feet,

Grab the stick, dash in the dark—

I’m a huge pounding demon

That roars at raccoons –

They whip around the corner,

A scratching sound tells me

they’ve gone up a tree.

I stand at the base

Two young ones that perch on

Two dead stub limbs and

Peer down from both sides of the trunk:

Roar, roar, I roar

you awful raccoons, you wake me

up nights, you ravage

our kitchen

As I stay there then silent

The chill of the air on my nakedness

Starts off the skin

I am all alive to the night.

Bare foot shaping on gravel

Stick in the hand, forever.

Long streak of cloud giving way

To a milky thin light

Back of black pine bough,

The moon is still full,

Hillsides of Pine trees all

Whispering; crickets still cricketting

Faint in cold coves in the dark

I turn and walk back slow

Back the path to the beds

With goosebumps and lose waving hair

In the night of milk-moonlit thin cloud glow

And black rustling pines

I feel like a dandelion head

Gone to seed

About to be blown away

Or a sea anemone open and waving in

cool pearly water.

Fifty years old.

I still spend my time

Screwing nuts down on bolts.

At the shadow pool,

Children are sleeping,

And a lover I’ve lived with for years,

True night.

One cannot stay too long awake

In this dark

Dusty feet, hair tangling,

I stoop and slip back to the

Sheath, for the sleep I still need,

For the waking that comes

Every day

With the dawn.