the night would go cool, enough to draw
near the one restless beside me.
Heat lightning far off shimmers like hope,
its flashed yellow on me like a deadly pallor.
I turn in my head to that time, endless as youth,
when a girl slipped from my side to stand
between two crossing headlights, an ache
of beauty I saw squat, lift, let go
her brassed water to ring like many
dimes allover the stones of the dead.
Casteen, emptied by age, your business long failed,
do you somewhere still whoop, surprised,
grabbing yourself like an old coach
for joy? The hum of that night
drones in my ear until I see
a moon float on the eyes of a girl
gilded fully against all the hunching hours we did
not think would end. Out there a boy races
home the family car, still swelling
the night with laughs, bad music,
a name softly whining inside him.
It will call, late, just as he lies down.
Where the parents sleep in memory's half-life, it
will float like a face barely speaking,
a roll of light's glimmer, not
summonable or known, leaving us again
awake to slap and claw at ourselves
for the stinging we cannot make go or stay,
until at last, rigid as stones, we rise, stand
midway between night's unpredictable pulse
and the pure deadly revelation of naked
light in our rooms . Lying as still
as I can I listen to each distant squeal.
Somewhere music rasps the moonless words
