after reading Mary Oliver
I cannot reach you
at five a.m. when you spring
awake to watch a summer rose
fall into a pink-petaled
lake where fishes bloom.
I’m not a morning
person unless a winter
less night yawns & stretches
into dawn with jarring songs
of owls & whippoorwills
and the charming squeak of
a bat. Outlined at dusk,
its soaring silhouette
intersects the evening
sky, circling insects
and other small mysteries
revealed to me before the
pink-pollen light recedes.
And then,
everywhere,
everywhere,
black roses blossom: hybrids
cultivated from a long, wild
growing season of the night.
