The Sentry As Witness

 



The Sentry As Witness

 

three days the moon

will be full

 

again

and in the night

 

while we sleep

while we turn

 

when we can’t sleep

an owl will ride

 

the never stopping

thermal across

 

the moon’s

face and be just

 

a shape –

just a shadow

 

briefly

obliterating

 

the light that’s cast

the path

 

of a stray

rabbit

 

stunned stiff

in being

 

seen.  it makes me

want to say this


entirely

out of context:


not all marriages

not all childbirths

 

not all wild night

embraces are meant

 

to be anything else but

or beyond the brief

 

mouth on mouth, claw

penetrating skin, 

 

the situation

peeled back

 

in the bright path

breaching

 

the white under-

belly now draped

 

in the patient maple

is an opportunistic

 

claw tipped now

in the vicious 

 

vermilion, filtered

and tipped with 

 

mosaic tufts

of feather,

 

of fur, and what's not

stuck floats up


to view the moon

in the face,

 

the now

setting moon nearly


in full

view

 

two days now

to full

 

 


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