Poem: Fretting at night

 The half-taught chorus of cicadas sings,

Half the night is flown on

pipistrelles wings,

flitting their jagged selves, 

black-clothed, 

miniature wolverines

with bats ears and bad teeth, 

they look rather ruthless, almost as bad

as cold little lizards crawling

on colder walls

of barnyard stone, lichen-covered, 

and frosted with fuzzy moss, 

Sunken glories tarnished with coppery colours, 

the colours of night; 

These lonely nights, My Lord ! 

Lonely, yet

not alone. 

I wonder where the sun shines now? 

This moment is cloaked in gloom,

the darker shades that loom, large, 

larger than life, 

nightmares of soiled impressions, 

the moon's not out, not tonight, 

the clouds hang low, as do convicts,

with weird fingers twitching 

a weird tattoo--

Regarding this, 

their constricting hold, they translate into gestures,

the sign language of the dead

the lurid snapshots of a certain state of mind; 

Apt reminders of yesterday's joys, idyllic pastures

dampened with rotten silences,

the clouding of eyes, red, with 

watered tears,

prickling heat 

searing the face

in memories of momentous occasions, lighter occasions, certainly, 

if you will--

unfettered flights of the soul, 

upwardly mobility, 

the rustle of nighttime leaves

brittle and battered, 

Autumn's melancholy memorandums. 

This dull, decrepit decay binds 

all that lives, 

organic matter gone to humus,

peat bogs of pathos,

crushed compost and broken

branches dried like bone,bleached 

beyond its just desserts; 

I, too, sooner than I know, 

must be manure. 

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from The Anvil of Dreams 1995