True Night
Sheath of sleep in the black of the bed:
From outside this dream womb
Comes a clatter
Comes a clatter
And finally the mind rises up to a fact
Like a fish to a hook
A raccoon at the kitchen!
A falling of metal bowls,
the clashing of jars,
the avalanche of plates
I snap alive to the ritual
Rise unsteady, find my feet,
Grab the stick, dash in the dark -
I'm a huge pounding demon
That roars at raccoons -
They whip around the corner,
A scratching sound tells me
they’ve gone up a tree.
I stand at the base
Two young ones that perch on
Two dead stub limbs and
Peer down from both sides of the trunk:
Roar, roar, I roar
you awful raccoons, you wake me
up nights, you ravage
our kitchen
As I stay there then silent
The chill of the air on my nakedness
Starts off the skin
I am all alive to the night.
Bare foot shaping on gravel
Stick in the hand, forever.
Long streak of cloud giving way
To a milky thin light
Back of black pine bough,
The moon is still full,
Hillsides of Pine trees all
Whispering; crickets still cricketting
Faint in cold coves in the dark
I turn and walk back slow
Back the path to the beds
With goosebumps and lose waving hair
In the night of milk-moonlit thin cloud glow
And black rustling pines
I feel like a dandelion head
Gone to seed
About to be blown away
Or a sea anemone open and waving in
cool pearly water.
Fifty years old.
I still spend my time
Screwing nuts down on bolts.
At the shadow pool,
Children are sleeping,
And a lover I've lived with for years,
True night.
One cannot stay too long awake
In this dark
Dusty feet, hair tangling,
I stoop and slip back to the
Sheath, for the sleep I still need,
For the waking that comes
Every day
With the dawn.
- Gary Snyder