Dusk seems slow, the drifts of cirrus high.
My eyes still hurt from a sunny haze on the Bay
When the yachts headed out this morning. Gone all day.
Now in the gradually lavender sky
Stars are beginning. So many kinds of light.
I wonder how long I've been in this chair?
At least I'm not hungry. The air
Gets chilly near the ocean though, toward night.
"Warm enough?" My daughter. Voice like mine.
"I've brought you a sweater, Mother. Here. Soon
As I'm through I'll join you, to watch the moon
Come up." Beyond the purple line
Of spruce it will ride out, opalescent, white,
Huge over Newport, as it always does,
Then blue, till nothing is as it was--
The world undisturbed but utterly changed by moonlight.
Like that time at Gibson Island. Blossoming pear.
Full moon. A fragrance touched me. He touched. Who?
Softer than breath. Shivering petals flew
Where I stepped, shaken in windless air,
The night on fire with sweetness. When I tried
To speak, I couldn't...tears came. Youth.
I can't speak now. Words in my mouth
Get broken. All I feel is caught inside.
"I'm here now, Mother. I hate staying in
When the moon's rising. Near the wharf--look there."
The changing moon. What can I do but stare,
A dumb animal, at my close kin?
Half in another world and half in this,
Stricken and from myself estranged.
In a twinkling we shall all be changed.
Possibly. Death is anybody's guess.
What will become of me? Maybe the soul, set free,
Scatters and clusters the way blue moonbeams break
To the ruffling Narragansett as a wake
Of pear petals. Moon blossoming sea.
The vision blurs. Too dark and bright. It's cold.
Light washes. Nothing. Null. The deep.
The years that empty into sleep.
It's damp out. Time to be taken in. I'm old.