4 AM

Written four years ago very late at night unable to sleep. Once featured on the front page of Allpoetry.com. (As if that means anything.)

an inquisitive silence
peers darkling in
a black blanket thrown over the glass
a visible emptiness pressing with its massless weight
(or weightless mass?)
on the smooth unyielding window -
reflectionless, all but invisible
but with the rigid will to resist the night.

stifling heat oppresses
the jailer glass offends
so I open the window
to let in the night
but no friendly blackness enters
only a coughing tuberculotic wind
and the sounds that ride it,
bareback like an unshod horse:
brittle small insect-cries,
moaning mourning oaks that groan as they sway,
opening statements from a starlit parliament of coyotes
on the hilltop.

weariness
sinks silver hooks into muscle and bone
pulling downward
it won't be long now
the dragon's egg will begin to hatch
dawnlight glaring in warning of a newborn sun
through the cracks in the black shell
neglected dreams grow impatient
but I can't stop
listening.