Light

I saw my old friend tonight in

the early evening of a cold winter sky.

She was a bright and slender bow,

new again, unfurled in the twilight.

Upon reaching home, I walked

down to the withered stalks of the

cornfield at the end of our road,

to watch her sun-turned face

for a moment before I retreated

to my supper. It had been a long,

spirit-squashing day and I was

a small gray moth, drawn

to a friendly curl of light.

She had a sideways smile, in recline

like a drowsing Cheshire cat.

The rest was invisible, dark as a stone

Ardhanarishvara at a whitewashed temple.

I wondered if she was watching something

funny: a cosmic TV sitcom, off and away

on the glowing horizon. Maybe though,

it was about her mate, lying just behind her,

kissing the bumps along her curving spine.

Or, perhaps, it was only a brief delight,

as when you spy the first evening star.

Soon the night would flower full of them,

and my friend would sink down deep

into her bed of obsidian feathers.

I hoped that she might dream of me,

dream of every one of us down here,

sunk in this animal gravity of days.

In her dreaminess, she would turn and smile

a tiny and secret smile in her rounded sleep,

sensing our own small dreams, our strange ways,

lifting into the sky.

They float upwards to Luna,

passing by like a harbinger breeze,

a cloud of giggly fireflies and sad raindrops.

And into the thundering deep they slip

away from us all, billion upon billion of earthen

lullabies unearthed, fluttering fitfully toward

hazy fields that swarm with beckoning lights.