Night

Dark pulses warm and moist

on the spring air

this night. There hangs

a voluptuous moon

luminous and heavy

as woman with child

casting a diluted coruscation

limning leaves

rustling in the breeze.

Birds shift in the trees

somnolently ease feathers

beak language

one to another

sounds all but lost

in the concert of crickets

the creak of the frogs

beating the night

so it shifts and breathes

croaks and trills

like some great

unknowable beast.

c.1980