Night, in its tide 
of coming and going 
is a restless provenance, 
thinking’s bride. 
No night can be
absolute: light against it 
articulate as pinprick, 

fattened as this low-
slung moon. Night is light’s 
ghost. To know night 
is to know what seems 
most to have left us, 
what sings across 
the currents rising. 

Even in the dark 
we sail through a world 
scrimshawed by light.  
The lesson of night 
is the lesson of how, 
within it, grass and lilacs 
perfume, crickets treble. 

How swaddled by it, our bodies
become hungry gods,
our breath, tide after tide.
Dear Night, for all your refusal, 
when I open my eyes 

I open them to their own light.