Edgartown Midnight


The poem ends, and we return to
the beach to let the moon affect us.
Edgartown lies silent, sleeps under sea-breeze,
Orion overhead cartwheeling.
Someone dreams just past that window.

And Orion and Diana pursue us
to the beach where we cannot tell
if it is Sappho's selanna or the moon
that kept up with the cars of our childhood.

The light off wave-blue and eye-blue are brothers,
though when eyes and the shore combine
two distinct midnights darken.
But talk spills into both,
and if, for a moment, we inhabit
each other's morning, the horizon stretches
and the moon nearing it enlarges.

Now we lie silent and long
under moonlight's subtle abrasions,
as wave after wave falls forward,
and the tide sings through its stations.

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