"Night"

[This stunningly beautiful poem concludes the second part of B.N.'s Journey Music manuscript. I know you'll enjoy it!]

Night


Tonight is only the page I lingered over,
Feeling an easy sadness for a photograph
Of Freud's beloved chows, the way the
Light lilts on the paper and my girlhood
Becomes a small boat on a huge horizon,

The way sleep untangles the reasons between us.
We are as uncomplicated as water as unwashed as salt.
The neighborhood's gone to hell and to the sleepless.
We are walking inside the houses

Across the room, from the chair to the table,
Toward the vase of flowers to the door,
Out the door to stand ashen under porch lights.

We rise each morning to the rush of tap-water,
Like little kites . And it's good to
Share in such simple relief. Farewell,
To twisted ecstatic sheets, the terrible bleary-eyed
Songs from a portable radio on the kitchen counter.
America is one big fat memory for insomniacs.

Tonight, I would give anything
To touch the world's face, to see the crowds'
Cheeks fill with sparks of dust,
Dirtied only by regret, and I, with my finger tip
Could wipe it all away.

Tonight is the piece of paper
On which the dark writes its name
That wants only to be made clean again.
And at this hour the trees along the street
Let go their leaves like the old book left
Open on the red arm chair.

B.N.
© to the author, 1983-2010