We here in Kent say sleep when the oaks sleep
and the backyard is quick with dark,
when the fast-food restaurants close and the dogs
that flank us on the couch have lost their bark,
when beyond our rooftops late Orion leaps.
But when the moon, rising above our street,
illumines the bed, and your hip and flank become
a refuge beyond some empty stretch of silence,
I cannot sleep or be of Orion’s love-glum,
restless mind despite our two dogs at my feet.
How can I forgo in dreams the planetary night,
that sweeping orison between one day and the next
in which lilac and dogwood and iris open suddenly
and you await amid shadows like a sacred text
to be read by touch beneath a pale lunar light?
The moon gladdens the concealing oaks that rise above
all barking hunters and their dogs. In its glow
we are safe from the sin-sick world that sent us
upstairs sad, that lorn mirage beyond our window
behind which in Kent we lie fast awake in love.