Evening Poems

9 o'clock and
a nightingale song

clatters forth
from a starling winged night

in perfect mimickry.
The moon and her mandrake
baby screech whites,

peel trees to bone. Blacks
shiver down.
-
The stars meet
at hush- Deaf but eternal

jury.  Atlas, stung by

each daughter: a pinhole
truth, still  naively serene

after all they've seen: from dove breath
to flame.  All
   is a curse to the lampbearers.
-
O sleep,
The moon holds court.

Great judge, her metals bleed
into radiance, cleave twilight to hill.
She bobs socketless
through aether and flame, &
to her gleaming calm

all shadows die. No  illusions survive
but reflection, who steeps wood in
moonwhites, petrifying old life into
honesty.
-

Moon, chokered-pearl
holds voice at night's throat -

pulls light through sea's veins
and tightens light's  rope,

weaving candle across
the skyline to bless
something older than memory,
more tender than breath.
-
a will o wisp promise
severs reeds,  racehorse fragile. I search

this ending place
with ghost light,

it shakes above the water, for
even the doomed fear
the heaviness of clean.