Night Song

Everyone is asleep, the houses dark, the town's vacant streets a gray quilt shot with shadows. I turn slowly on the lawn, trailing a piece of sheer cloth. It ripples in the moonlight, and its shadow flows across the ground. I swirl it faster, then slower, making the variegated shadow dance, its patterns forming and dissolving as the cloth folds and opens again and again. There are no passersby to wonder what I am at; to scurry away with lowered heads so as not to attract the attention of the madman. I let the cloth rise and fall and watch with fascination the blossoming and wilting of flowers of light and shade. I find myself humming softly, as though these patterns were some randomly generated score in an alien form of notation which I am attempting to decipher. A flutter of bat wings and the humming trees accompany me. The mad song is sweet. I would sing it all the time.

Early

March now borrows days from May, lulling winter with a soporific buzzing of bees who have come to sip the nectar of early flowers. The honey they make could be no more golden than this sunlight, no sweeter than this soft, warm air. Arriving before their time, the afternoon breezes find no young leaves to flutter, but must be content to sing through the pines. The sprawled hours drowse, sated with green dreams.

The nights are more like April. Cobalt sky lingers as the stars emerge, and the breeze grows brisk and cool. Spurge laurel scents the invigorated air, the frogs croak, and all the wind's rustling sounds bring the woodland to life, as though the animals had all ventured forth for some festival of spring. I let them romp through my imagination as I lie on the grass, free of the bulky garments of winter, gazing at the wheeling stars.