Selected Poems

CLOTHES HANGING OUT IN ANOTHER RAIN

moths battening at blank night windows in a luster
of furze and captured lamplight that somehow
models the chair rungs— there's music

a reminder it's the Autumnal Equinox again
round another corner, clocks back up
slip another hour past the cracks

clean up, later—cigarette stubs, coffee cups, effluvia
of visiting lost love—and it's raining again:
drips from the eaves

sluice away the dreadful summer as shirts
flap beyond the pane, waving forlorn.
Further north

in clearing weather, a harvest moon must rise
melodramatic, a huge flame creature.
I think I have grown up again

without deciding what I want to be.
Promise me, promise me music
will run on all night

into grey tomorrow, where moth wings
will whisper rarer music; sleeves
beyond the window, beckon.

Relax, insomniac. There is no one on the porch
but empty clothing, nothing blood or bone—
a simple dancing on the line

slaphappy gestures that compel this
recitation, this chanting solo
to list perhaps all the names I have forgotten—

the faces I have not. As a matter of faith then
tomorrow will rise somewhere, green bine
and leaf, double-twined, as north now

windows open onto fields of watery moonlight—
shadow figures dance en rond, and weep
to harvest seed once confidently sown.

Ruth Moon Kempher