you can recall, or rather,

not help but recall,

through the mercy, the menace, of memory

other places than here,

as you peer at the first steel star

that seethes, as a lover jealous,

in the once-soporific sky

that was your salve, and solace.

 Let them fill you up now,

those other nights of soothing urgings,

of trees a-swarm with rollicking crickets

their trochaic matings a choir

lulling you to somnolence –

and hear, in the mind’s ear

the tree frogs by your sister’s pond,

a silken sheen its evening attire,

the staccato workings

of the gray-green jowls

and the stoic "hoo" of an owl.

Remember how you sat in the evening

in that al fresco theater

the vast, placid heavens

festooned with jewels!

mute before the invisible stirrings

of things more minuscule than you --

and how you were drowsy,

and wantonly warm

and the breeze was kind

on a comatose arm.

And how you, to the mountains, came,

and were cold, and continually stunned

by the queer quiescence -

the unbeneficent dark, dumb!s

such that night, your paramour,

anathema, became

and you could not forgive

what would not succor blame. 

For a cache of weary reasons,

you cannot now hope to soar

but can cling to reminiscence

of less arduous swims:

to the cooings and comings

and heralds and harks

and the nebulous numblings

and hummings and hymns

and the beam of the firefly

as the nodding night dims.

In the obdurate dark

you must drift in ice

and but beckon the balm

of the far-off embrace.

So gather your feathers,

and sinuous neck bow,

to weather the winds

      of the wintry sea

           you warily navigate,

                      now.