When the house pours its yellow light
into the day’s long wake, we become
swimmers treading water, dusk an ocean
here in the back yard. Slowly we float
to the sound of ice in a glass of tea or gin,
guitars on a neighbor’s radio,
dandelions unwrapping like anemones,
urchins, a spiny seed for every thought
planting again this unasked-for harvest
drifting as the smell of blackberries
settles, holds the last of summer close
and deep enough to make us heady.
Here with evening falling into our arms
we know we’ve stayed inside too often,
felt strangers to our own hands,
the fortunes we can’t read on our palms,
our wishes charted to some other porch
where cleaner windows gleam, gold islands.
The wake behind the last boat thins
to plain water and salt. Robins nest in the eaves,
and we founder on our wooden chairs
in the swells of that purple scent,
begin our stories again, starting
Once upon a night with so many stars