portrait of light and perfect sound

The night sulks, trespassed 
by halogen dazzle

racing through red railing.
An  edgy glare to curtain the stars.

The night glowers, and lucky us, 
witness to a magical thinking,

empathic and shining,

wordless like resting breath,

the morning grass, moonlight on water,

coyote’s patient hunger.

The day hung mired in dogwood winter, 
a cool flood of yellow pollen: 

Bradford Pear, everywhere.

Each surface, a granular umbrage.

The day, abuzz in bees knees,

felt genuflection to forsythia

and honeysuckle, long limbs,

maple and sweet. We come pink 

with desire to a night, 

snake-skin fragile, glacial and deep.

The wolf hours grow wrinkled,

long in the tooth, flabby with 

nettles and bothered stars.

The love songs of toads hide here.

In a moment, harpooned with sirens,

the wind is flimsy and flat,

no song in its piney tresses.

We squat sepia-speckled, chagrin,

you turn off the light. The night is reconciled, 
the dazzle undone, shadows lean in.

An old man listens, 

a wife dozes on joints arthritic.

Night rides her like a Mississippi
barge, low in dark water.  

Their years, carnelian, have made burrows 

in the bed linens, ivory line-dried.

To the old man, rain on tin was

the perfect sound, but tonight

he changed his mind as she rolled over,

her moans a trellis of doves, 

miracle of bodies so small for timbre so deep.