Hours
Hours
Above the clamorous, sandhill-crane-filled river, a bridal veil of cloud obscures the moon. Her lupine face bends toward the earth, a hollow brightness the immensity of night can't swallow. Specks of grey-green light erupt and blinker out at water's edge, sway beyond the rushing, silver-bladed river. Though across the prowling groomsmen's dogged lips the Iris-fingered night sweeps her thin digit, we must not think she holds their peace for us. What is a sleeping boy beside his father to those who keep the hours of the moon? No wisdom but the desert's scarcity has trained the ravenous to forego sleep, persuades the cottonwood, with warped limbs and winter leaves, to hiss against the winds. They do not reck a child's dreams. The lantern-eyed coyotes sulk and huff a stones' throw from our camp, close enough I see their brazen masks unshadowed briefly by the glowing bride. Like wind-guttered wicks, their tails flash and flick and they are gone. But you, my son, sleep on. Somewhere in the underbrush, the pack of canids pads nearer the dark-plumed river. There, birds do not sing lullabies—no lies about how danger darkens other doors but never ours. They tell the grimmest tales, describe how earth’s fecundity is sown and sprouts from broken bone, how fragile shells must crack; their occupants emerge alone. The night-eyes glow. A great horned owl muses, Who? Who ordered violent darkness fall on us? Who but the moon, so soon to fade? The rattling chatter of the crane-call shakes the night ecstatically—dark teal, dark teal— a tuneless campanile. A film of blue. Blood spilled within the turbid, wolf-moon river. For this scant meal of heaven's flesh, the slinking shades beside the riverbank concatenate discordant melodies. You do not wake.
This poem is brilliant, Daniel. Absolutely captivating and otherworldly.
really good