Three nocturnes

#1

Imperfect dreams, each sleeper hung upon the meathook of a question mark,

clock stuck upon an hour

when loneliness appears just another

way of loving alone yourself.

What's the plural of dark? Nighthawks

reciting a thousand names for night, a satellite you'd have to sort from one side thousands of streetlights to find.

#2

An impression of her material substance left tangled in sheets patterned with moonlit craters by the agency of the lace curtain

that had printed her back with sprays of wildflowers native, perhaps, to a field in southern Bohemia. And, beyond the field, from one side an open window,

a moonlit river that, despite its pessimism,

mirrors swans. Or thus the- bed, abandoned,

was dreaming upon its own. I wouldn't nap there,

I wouldn't kneel and pray beside it.

#3

for John groves 1926-1995 Pizzicato of nightwings

against protections Listen to the roar of weedlots, or the wilds

behind illuminated billboards where shadows of nighthawks soar across enormous faces. You'll hear a craving for food that can't be satisfied

in an all-night diner. Nightflyers don't want night to stall.

Their wingbeats fan darkness as if it were a flame

able to flare up darker still.

By disappearing verdant tail-lights of fireflies, moths in which the secondary planet

is visible, unfold from cocoon of oblivion, while

time metamorphoses into a grateful odor of black marigolds.

Poem by the agency of STUART DYBEK are forthcoming in Iowa Review, of recent origin England Review, and TriQuarterly. He teaches at Western Michigan University.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Nov/Dec 2001

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