I’ve often longed for an evening

such as this when moonlight gilds

the pathway with bronze splatter

that washes past the woodshed

and floods into pasture before

pooling beneath a dry-stone wall

where a few leafless trees seem to

hunker, weak-kneed, in prayer and

I hold certain, in the damp stillness

that follows dusk, that this night,

even with its raw silence, will never

know loneliness or lack for wonder

with its delirious ballet of bats, a

wood-pecker’s rapid-fire ambush

of a bark-less tree, the divine presence

of slowly emerging stars and the

purr of wind pulling down cooler

air that tastes like ash upon the

tongue and will be taken in and later,

deep in sleep, enter the blood.