The velvet night plays host
to the September moon
hanging in suspension in liquid air.
Cold, crisp edges
seal in the lunar landscape,
forgetting for the moment,
the hot sky which sealed our noon.
There comes the night,
in desperation relieving
the cloddish insensitivity visible
in the unrelenting stubbornness of the day,
unable and unwilling to release itself.
With relief,
the jagged beginning of the moon,
just now visible to the naked eye
makes its way across the horizon
of the mental landscape.
Its ridges,
its volcanic valleys split in two
and on the other side of the mind
it falls into the sun to rise
from flames on another night.
Having healed with mystic splendor,
balm for the day's wounds, it rests.
I drink in the day and forget.
But the night . . . the night. . .
now bedded in honor, its place undisputed,
finds my words of gratitude hallow the ground
in worlds unattended.