I sleep on the porch;
a breeze blows through the screens,
I look up at the stars as I stretch
under the Big Dipper. An old sleeping bag on
worn floor boards, and I lose myself
to the evening’s music. Until the winter
cold drives me to mattress and comforter,
the porch holds my dreams: night serenades me
under constellations, in orchestras of crickets,
the frogs’ rejoinders, and
the trees’ rustling cantatas.
Two-thirty a.m., I wake; stillness
would overwhelm reverie, if not for the river’s
rushing, an irrepressible surge rising from wooded earth and
turbulent water, an overflow streaming through me
in darkness: night carries me
beyond myself without
hesitation.