It’s the absence of city lights and haze
that allows the night to take everything
but the soft din of the lake, yet scatters the sky
with more than only the brightest celestial bodies;
it’s like that, though I admit wishing
a full moon hung rather than a waning crescent,
believing it’s cast, even in these candle-lit hours,
might have saved a ration of the earlier comfort
I felt admiring the tree line and curve of footpath
we followed to the shore on summer days
that passed easily in a profound, abiding contentment,
such as I have not felt since, from this deep run
of darkness that imposed upon the over-look
seen from this patio table for four, where all evening
I’ve sat in the company of three empty chairs,
off-white now, but bright when the nights
passed with much talk and the sharing of wine,
then dinner with friends, our sing-songy
voices honoring the leisureliness of summer
rise from a grief-hollowed emptiness that resides
within my heart — like echoes of a last horn
sounding throughout an ascetic innerness —
drawing to the forefront of a sky black mind,
those peek-a-boo pleasures that reside in regrets
from a time when this wind touching my face
seemed the very breath of a permanent
and satisfying life.
