Nocturnal

A night, then two hours of sleep, then a day, then two hours of sleep, and now another night is passing, the moon is passing and the pines raise their tips as though pointing at it, as though envious of its ability to roam across the dark sky. But I know how the moon is tethered to earth by roots no less real for being invisible. Everything is stuck here— the pines, the moon, the buzzing cicadas, the cats, the houses, the cars whose drivers have come to believe that they themselves are free to roam.

They all end up in the same place. Even the ephemeral clouds end up returning to the sea and soil. Perhaps the moon, pulling ever so slowly, will one day, millions of years hence, escape and wander off into its own orbit around the sun. But that would be only a longer root, though planted in blazing gas rather than ancestral soil. Trees have no more cause to envy the moon than I do, and I do not envy the moon. Best to be here and be content to be here, and not struggle against gravity. If its pull on my joints and bones sometimes keeps me awake or wakes me from sleep, so it goes. Eventually I will sleep again, eventually sleep at last. After all, I am part of that mass the moon slowly tries to escape. Its beaming light is a root my eye feeds with delight.


( Sunday Verse )