[1] The passing storm had knocked Over an oak on the power lines.

So here we are, with pen and paper, With breath and word, with each other, Bone racked and marooned in a pool Of candlelight. Write. Write to

Remember the others who have kept Watch over the stations of the night, Stations through which desire keeps Steaming in and out, rarely carrying Us out, intact, into the hours of light.

Attempt baby-sleep. Attempt monk-prayer. Attempt a philosopher’s knowing grimace. No. None of these would help except that Which is not permitted to living. Death.

[2] The candlewick is soon swamped In its mutable wax. It dips its head. A smoky light, and then nearly goes Dark as if it were road-kill whimpering, Waiting to be put out of its misery.

Soon however a breach in the thinned Crater, at whose center the shrouded flame Continued to breathe. Then tears that Harden even as they drip and pool.

Resurrection follows. The wick stands again, The comb of a rooster rising from a shortened Neck, and crowing in the dark. You, restored to Vision, attempt to write down what it has to say

July 11. 2005 Hurricane Dennis passing overhead

Moths should learn to navigate darkness Since they so quickly find light. ~ Adam Zagajewski

Strangers kiss as softly as moths. ~ Michael Ontaadje

[1] I know there is a connection between These two lines and last night when we Turned in for bed, and you turned to me as Believers turn to the body of a nailed messiah.

Yet it must have been the unseeing dark Covering us both, in which I sunk towards The depths where blue sunlight vanishes, That I failed to notice your sounding hand.

[2] Unlearned in the art of navigating By instinct, by sympathy, by faith, You must have collided against Night’s walls, unused oil lamps, Tables loaded with moldy feasts, Everything but what you sought. What was it you sought? Refuge In my body of embers? Light?

[3] So this morning, our spines greet Each other like adjacent tenement Houses, in whose shadows we must learn To kiss again, as softly and as tentatively As strangers, as moths in the dark.

To sail is necessary, to live is not ~ Plutarch

After an afternoon spent Under a spell, a performance Of rain, he walks out into The evening, grass heavy, And feet sinking into casks Of wet clay, to stand under An oak that is still weeping.

How to let lose that self With its low murmur as if It were a radio dial stuck On a station of disaster only Reporting thoughts that are Of storms, streets turning into Lagoons, a lone shirtless man Poling a raft of driftwood, Rumors of war, of separation, And that backward gaze cast out Of trains pulling out from sidings, And enter a true clearing in The weather of his heart?

As if to encourage himself Of such a foolish endeavor He softly chants to himself The motto of a Roman sailor: “Navigare et necesse, Vivere non est necesse.”