Nightly
Posted: March 20th, 2016, 9:32 pm
Nightly
Come fear the dark with me, child;
the moon is curling herself round
and shadows are purring the skygrounds;
bluecats of low cloud slink
and stretch like kits to lap
at spilled red on the billowstones
of the far horizon;
light as dark, heavy as light,
tufts of the daythrush are wandering down
the dusky steeps of drisk
like ghosts of broken flight;
in high circles of string and dry grasses,
orphaned songs give evening
a silence it cannot keep,
and the night-tide climbs
the shrouded limbs of the elm,
patient as earth and all starlight, mothering.
Dayrise, and what but rot will come
adrift in the breath of the mourning
glories twining like rime the hardrusted
ironies of the sabled rail?
Come fear the dark with me, child;
our souls are hushed
birdsong nested in the white hands
of the moon, and night --all night--
moves like death beneath us,
deft, and clawed, and rising.
Come fear the dark with me, child;
the moon is curling herself round
and shadows are purring the skygrounds;
bluecats of low cloud slink
and stretch like kits to lap
at spilled red on the billowstones
of the far horizon;
light as dark, heavy as light,
tufts of the daythrush are wandering down
the dusky steeps of drisk
like ghosts of broken flight;
in high circles of string and dry grasses,
orphaned songs give evening
a silence it cannot keep,
and the night-tide climbs
the shrouded limbs of the elm,
patient as earth and all starlight, mothering.
Dayrise, and what but rot will come
adrift in the breath of the mourning
glories twining like rime the hardrusted
ironies of the sabled rail?
Come fear the dark with me, child;
our souls are hushed
birdsong nested in the white hands
of the moon, and night --all night--
moves like death beneath us,
deft, and clawed, and rising.