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.