In the summer night’s coolness walnuts are dropping
on roofs cars earth with sharp reports and thuds
In the morning they punctuate the early September light
their husks green round unbroken on the ground ending
all the invisible sentences on the season’s last pages
Lunar Occultation
Halfway up the maple, the moon looks
suspended in a mesh of telephone wires.
A few hours ago it blotted a bright blue
planet from the sky—it takes 84 Earth years
for a single year to pass there but the moon
obscures it in ten seconds before its thirteen
rings can split the horizon. On this harvest month
it can dim even the dog star but now it needs my help—
tilting my head in homage I take a few steps
to the right, and the moon is free.
*
Author’s note: The lunar occultation referred to is when the moon passes in front of a planet, in tonight’s case, Uranus. I combined this with the visual experience I had in my front yard this evening. In the long run, I think the version of the poem below, shorter and without the additional planet-specific info, may be the final form this poem takes. Because the specific information about how distance affects time and perception, is very interesting to me, and just kinda cool, I wanted to share the original poem above as well. Due to an unfortunate hit-and-run accident soon after its formation, Uranus is also a strangely tilted planet, thus the reference in the last stanza. Feel free to comment on which version you prefer. Lunar Occultation Halfway up the maple, the moon looks
Sparrows huddle under the car’s warm frame.
As I come back with my coffee they flow out
between the tires like a sound. Gray clouds nest
on the ridgeline. Driving into this image of sullenness
lightens me—as I pass through the opaque menace thins
to harmless mist. On the road home the light rain
drones outside the window like a distant train.
From my porch my daughter and I watch bats
sweep away the dusk. Pockets of light appear,
tuck into lamps for a few hours, then go out.
Reading together on the couch. In wordless motion
my daughter gets up and walks out of sight.
Just to the kitchen, this time, for water, but I sit quietly
and prepare, listening to her steps moving away.
Maybe aged twelve, I started staying up past 11
watching the local news with my dad
cup of tea and the Yankees score the daily last things
Tea that late never kept me awake
it was for time with my father
and learning tomorrow’s weather
In my dorm at college it attracted curiosity
people started coming to my room at eleven
arriving with mugs steaming coming to see the day done
One winter night we took it outside
into the courtyard in a snow flurry
three dozen students in flannel
pajamas sweatpants boots and mugs
spelling out T-E-A in giant letters
not a protest just a confirmation
atypical for that time and age
Tonight we talk after the kids are asleep
while you bathe I make you tea
which we take upstairs to our room
where last night a strange green insect
watched me from the windowsill
while I drank tea and wrote
about a dream and slept by you
awoke to today an empty cup to fill
This windy September night the air’s as noisy as any
shallow stream
Beyond it the stars shimmer through time’s waves
Beyond them lies the unreachable
river bed
Beyond that if there is any bedrock to the soul
of the universe will I find you whole
again there
or will it be an imprint on an eon’s sediment
of what has passed
both of us
already becoming others in another time
Two hundred thousand hands
are clapping for the rain
Opened the window a crack
to let out a tiny grasshopper
a tide of August moths rushed in
on the crashing surf of crickets
There’s nothing—
the August crossing
assures us—we can do
with the moon as thin
as a rabbit’s ear
every emotion leaping
like a toad on a
dry white mountain
Late afternoon. The hills behind me
obscure the sun yet as I walk across the field
I can still see my shadow on the grass
a faint whisper of motion on the ground
always before me touching everything first
coloring every step I’m about to take
towards the new day so I turn around
it is still there larger and darker or is that the shadow
of what killed the old day standing up
to shrug off its sleep
Translations from the English 