On A Clear Night

On a clear night, when the moon is full

and the wind has ceased her play among the tree tops,

has stopped the whoosh and clack of branches waving,

stilled the loud cries on these hushed nights,

all is quiet, save for the crickets’ click

and the tree frogs’ peeping, soft and distant.

So we stop ourselves and listen to this silence

that surrounds us, takes us in, warms us here.

Our heartbeats begin to settle, our loud pulses

softened, now, to a gentle stillness, and our unstrained

ears adjust to the quiet, like a radar directed,

tweaked to distant stars and faint pulsars;

and in that silence settling around us,

an owl hoots, his deep, guttural rumbling calling out

from the darkness, a darkness intensified

by the stillness, by the clearness of this night.

And quieted ourselves, we are reminded where we are,

gone now from the city’s glaring lights,

an artificial glow that blinds us to the dark,

and away from the city’s sounds, the blaring noise,

a cacophonous racket of the street lights’ buzz

and the whine of engines racing, wheels spinning,

hastening forward, faster and faster, our lives

speeding up and speeding by and leaving us behind

on a night obscured by glaring lights and blaring noise.

The night’s stillness there is vacant, an absence,

something taken, stolen from us who need

to hear the deep rumble of an owl, calling out,

a reminder of who we are and leading us home.