Celestial Instincts

I remember long slow walks past those strangely illuminated night trees. Stars hung just a few miles high above the city, in specks and in clusters. Nothing stopped me, yet nothing pulled me on. Cars littered suburban streets, enigmatic as Stonehenge.  Dogs would stop howling and transform themselves into snakes, enjoying their newfound closeness to the Earth, before they were expected to turn back at first glint of day to the routine life of plastic water dishes and yapping at passersby. Nights of heat and heat lighting. When all could be explained by a glance into another momentary flash, seen through the frame of bent branch or curved vine. Or more likely, explanation not even in the vocabulary of these nights. Low-lying bushes discarded as daytime appearances began to form into hoops and rings of flame. Lights closer to me blinked in astonishment. The smallest nocturnal insects told stories of such magnificence I had to let some of the stars float back up for a time, so as to focus downward, and be at eye-level at this no less than celestial framework. Then, before the biggest star rose and nightworld ended, I would flip onto my back, to better breathe in the lights that have stood still, measured travelers’ tales, held world stories, and caused to sleep and to wake.

1983

Published in “The World #38” 1983 / Published by St. Mark’s Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th Street, 10003. #poetry #prosepoems #stmarkspoetryproject #nyc