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.
