Late Night Arrival
Nancy Cherry
-Point Reyes Writer’s Retreat
In my anger, in my grief, in my loving lately, a bird sings but I can't get close.
I can't get beyond the couch
and folding chairs with their open mouths.
Night gathers at the edges like a cloud bank while the banging wind
finds a way in. Ocean air butts against
the bluff of penstemon and yarrow, but I can't see them—only
the white rail running.
Above me, people are sleeping. Where their breath touches
the window, mist rises. This room,
bound and static in the dark, will open to everyone in the morning.
Years ago, I gardened in hard moonlight, passing under wisteria and fog
with a shovel and shears. What kind of ghost was I—
solid as the clods that turned beneath my boots in a world drained of color?
Red roses became charcoal, leaves wrought iron. The trees were poured
of steel, motionless above the smell of cows and damp earth.
Hundred-year-old cypress bowing in their druid's robes seemed ancient then.
The sea was close but silent. Sometimes a barn owl would swoop down
like the moon and rustle the air—a wish
in the dark. Maybe that was all I wanted—night beneath my wings.
I still dream of flying—sailing along a riverbank, over a neighbor's
grove of trees, and—with a little effort—
clearing spires. I am not afraid to leave the earth or fall because
it takes all my attention to rise.
Sometimes I wonder why I am the only one in the air.
Outside, dawn arrives on time. Waves appear as birds whistle..
But the darkness does not simply disappear—
it draws back like a curtain and diminishes in the light. See?
There is the pier, pointing. There is the road
through wild grass. And all the color returning to the hillside.
Nancy Cherry
Nancy Cherry is a North Bay Area poet and editor living in Novato, CA. Her poetry has appeared in Gyroscope, Nimrod, Calyx, Mid-American Review, and West Marin Review. She was recently recorded in Berkeley, CA at voetica.com/poets/1001/5 if you would like to hear her read.