Where does the night
rest its shoulders when it sleeps?
Put away its wings,
its dark tetherings?
It holds the diary of my dreams,
shades my prayers.
I walk through black snowdrifts.
Hear flutes call soundlessly
in the distance.
The night has rainbows.
I see them touch the clouds,
the aurora that drapes the zenith.
The night is not for the blind.
It is a seascape,
a hand that touches the face,
feeling its braille, saying,
thank you
for the truth you show me.
Daylight falls in the crevices of night.
Like coal,
that glows with an iridescent face.
An ancient wizard’s face of blue light
and ruby eyes,
that see into the earth,
to the very bottom of the earth.
It is night.
It is the womb of a starless mother.
It is the patience of darkness.
The dream that forms its pearls
and gathers them
as dew on the leaves.
Night, where the dawn
sleeps like a sacred child.
A savior born in glory.
A child laughing with the wisdom
of the earth inside it.
Poetry in its sweet sacraments
of prayer and longing.
Give me the coal
and put it on the table,
where I can see the beauty
of the sky without stars.
The presence of the cave
inside the nova of the world.
And then I will lay down
with the night by my head.
With all its possessions
smiling in the face
of the everlasting darkness,
and know a light
brighter than the sun.
The waysides and streets
of forever,
beginning again and again,
with the offering of dawn,
falling through its fingers
like threads of gold