Night Sky on the Eve of October

A parting of clouds in the sky tonight

Left a small moaning moon in a sea of deep blue,

And banks of grey cloud, like cliffs

Encroaching the sea,

Blushed with moonlight like white rouge.

It was stunning, allow me to say,

And insisted itself on the night

As some God-drenched canvass

Of the American west

Might insist on meaning or purpose,

A sign in the sky.

And on another night in summer, say,

In the drench of one passion or other

I might want to believe.  

But it is October now

And the earth-bound world

Has its own emanations:

The smell of backyard bonfires in oil drums,

Clam bakes, chimney smoke,

And down by the lake

The sound like a stitching

The train makes on the town’s tracks.

Its whistle sings and

Dog barks echo as through a megaphone.

These redound in the brittle air

To themselves alone,

As if to say, here is the world you know,

And you have work to do.

That moon up there? It is small and cold.

The icy sea it floats in is sky,

As hollow as the barrel the dogs are barking in

Those clouds are just clouds,

Great banks of them.

And winter is closing in.