Night Watch - For Rembrandt
The stars have descended a little lower, to keep us —
My kinsmen and I —company on this night watch
On a newly roused African night.
We filch a little bit of the effulgence of the waking moon,
Reluctant, with the invasion of jealous clouds, their plumes
Fragile with inconsistency.
We rely on the luminescence of each other’s eyes and the trust
In our hearts
Tinder, broken by flying flickers of fireflies,
Shine through the breath of darkness, dis-virgining the chunky yolk
Of secrets and the clout of night, so corvine.
Every breath keeps us warm and frightens the monsters lurking
Around the lean corridors of the enchanted thresholds.
The heavens stare downward —witnesses to a stifling explosion of
Will; so are the crepitating crickets and cicadas —in prayers they
Egg us on, and through borrowed liturgy of nocturnal canticles.
The heartbeats in us make silenced music —loud only by the essence of
Gaiety and humming drums lightly tapped by ancestral fingers,
Helping to warm our hearts and will in the face of the severest darkness
Made lighter by the glows of slow-running lights — the broad painting of
Dawn.
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