Nocturne

The black sketch of the moon, from any neighborhood,
seems far more certain of its illness, and the chains
that tie it to our world as to a bed
than of that world below, whose trellised rains

stacked like green freight in the archipelagos
seem intricate, wind-roughened, close-spun, free.
Black stone, in your diminished state, hold close
your memory of the uprooted scree

that tore you from the hemorrhaging plains; sip
your tribute of insomniac regard;
and, from the slurred buzz of our dreaming, strip
our caved-in memories of house and yard

and, tying them to a passing comet’s tail,
fling that lit torch end over end over end . . .
white stone, at whom prisms stand aghast and blend
a light so indirect, it takes the veil . . .

do not forget the closeting of wives.
Like red wine on the tongue, it stalls and thrives.