51

Measurements by Moonlight

Levered up cruel valleys by chosen direction

again I walk the mountaintops like footstones

set across a shallow riverbed

and pace off this small world’s measurements.

The stars had not shone so near

were the reaching earth not sweeter.

Still dear are the still bones buried now,

folded in inundated valleys of remembering:

an early Easter luminous on fragile violets;

a golden afternoon in autumn, tiger-spotted

along the forest eaves and aisles;

the cool moon rising inquisitive on an uncharted cove

and guiding toward me a great sea turtle up the sand;

and a voice rousing me, inconsolable for grief,

from the nightmare where man died like sprayed flies

and the deserted world

sank.