Tag Archives: night

An Hour Gone Past Midnight

An hour gone past midnight;
the songbirds try out new trills:
sparrow, robin, mockingbird,
wren, finch and whip-or-whill

all whistle at their favorite tunes
now that the traffic’s pace
has slowed to stopping. The pale moon
reflects in pools of fallen rain

left from the evening storm,
their mirror surfaces broken
by the floating corpses of termites
caught out during their swarm
tonight, seeking wood and water.

Across the street a houselamp shines
against a window’s lattice bars;
and locked inside, these neighbors sit
illuminated by the eerie glow
of a brand new fifty-eight inch god.

That’s a light you can’t hide under a barrel,
I think, then listen to the birds, again.
I like not knowing what tonight’s program is.

Surprise me, oh great universe
with what is yet to be
for the unknown is never worse
than dull monotony
Let loose the new, and strange and wild
I will not be depressed;
No matter how you show yourself
Likely I’ll be impressed.
It’s all been done, the cynics say,
there is no more unique;
but I must strongly disagree
when I hear each day speak.
The words may be the same, it’s true,
strung out in well-known ways,
in sentences and paragraphs
like yesterday’s displays
but each word, if you pay it mind
is different from the rest;
it lives for just a moment,
then it fades in silence, death.
Behind these brief, temporal sounds
an underlying hum
continues on; it shakes the ground
like a low-pounding drum
The heartbeat stays the same,
only the synopation varies —
the flitting words that scat around
seeming so ordinary.

A half hour gone past one o’clock
and all the birds, asleep.
Like me, they’ve done their exercise
and now have jobs to keep.

The locusts and the crickets now
come out, and take their turn;
another unwrit manuscript
I think worthwhile to learn.

19 MAY 2004

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New Orleans Spring

Once New Orleans weather starts to warm
it becomes quite bearable in shirt sleeves
to linger under the carport at night
enjoying a cigarette in the dark

while the light scent of jasmine fills the air
and the bustle on the main streets is slowed
(in those few short weeks before summer starts,
and the dense, wet weighted swelter bears down

to sap the strength from your pores, and slowly
suck the breath from your lungs – even the cloud
of smoke leaking from a cigarette sags
to the ground under that ponderous damp)

and in those too few evenings of short spring,
before the chorus of locusts comes back
from its winter hiatus to rehearse
and the palmetto bugs (or big roaches)

are still hidden, too busy with breeding
to venture out and scratch at the screen door
it is often very still and quiet –
and you can forget you are underneath

a carport (in a sometimes dangerous
city where tourists come to drink too much,
urinate on the streets, and leave their trash)
and see beauty in the sunset’s colors.

17 MAR 2004

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Full Moon

There is a soft glow to the world tonight,
and the dark, dim lit streets, beseiged with rain
these past three weeks, shimmer silver and bright
while the clouds are wispy and on the wane.

For a brief moment, between summer storms
the sky is clear, and from its hiding place
where it has grown big and full, the moon comes
into view, the features of its round face

sharp and defined, like an epiphany
that fills the dull world with recognition.
Enlightened souls are like that moon’s full state:
While others absorb light, separately,
they, by their actions and disposition,
like mirrors, reflect and illuminate.

13 JUL 2003

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A Balmy Night in New Orleans

The moon is as full tonight as my heart;
it hangs low in the sky, brimming with light
that cascades in dimming circles that start
to lose their focus in the wet hot night.

Only half filled, and yet it seems so bright
and clear, despite the shrouding, cloying fog
that seeks to blur away the line of sight,
the soupy air laying like an old dog

panting, too worn out and winded to bark;
My heart, too, is tired, but satisfied
to sit under the carport in the dark

and ponder the world, beautiful and wide.
Half full? The rest lies in a shadow place,
and forms the smile that fills my face.

08 JUL 2003

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