Night Shadow
I am awake.
I cannot sleep.
The wind blows the chimes,
and scrapes the chairs on the deck.
They fall to their knees.
Snow is predicted on the mountain
at 2000 feet.
Will it reach the sea,
and feast on the desert in water,
salt?
Ignite like the light
in the cactus
where the pygmy owl burrow,
and wait in a hole
for the sun,
to color the world,
as it climbs the lines,
of the sluice?
Will it taste the air,
as it steps,
gingerly at first,
then, like a root, whole and curved,
tangled and pungent,
reach like the forests
to pine and curl, until,
petals beckon and core
life to fruit
even more?
Of course!
Feel your smile!
It soars!
There is no time
in the night.
I am given beads on a bracelet,
red, green,
purple, yellow,
blue, orange,
a speckled egg,
an olive tree -
birds nest in me,
singing from the roots,
roots octopied,
with keys -
Where lines the night with when
that doesn’t count until the sun
begins to mount and count the hills
with a hum igniting one,
even as shade,
hands, like apples,
orange, red, and brown,
to blue and yellow,
grounding green,
with leaves,
to shake the wind,
and teach it how to grow -
There, we feed our head and toes,
and sow
what is sung - begun
when lung was none,
then, gill, then rung.
