In the middle of a night
in the middle of September
the dog awoke her with a
growl and when she followed
the animal out into the orchard
near the house she found
herself illuminated in a
phosphorescent
lake of moonlight,
and wide awake
in a silence in which owls
and even crickets were asleep.
From the shadows underneath
the apple trees she watched the
dog’s black shape as it sniffed
along the fence and
didn’t see until too late the
ground beneath her slippers open
up and didn’t hear until too late
the silence suddenly erupt in
shrieks of spiders, leaves and
stones that held her as she
pitched headfirst into an
ocean canyon filled with stars.
She thought that she was dreaming,
as she tumbled through a rain of
sparks and cinders high above the
burning palaces and parliaments
and watched a choir of ravens
carrying the coffins of some Savior
and his innumerable concubines
across wheat fields paved with
clocks that all curled backwards
towards a grove of birch trees
she remembered from a distant
summer when she had been a girl
alone, afraid and lost who
imagined the latticework of
branches as the labyrinth of her
heart and saw each leaf– each
one a human face– turn slowly
into the black shape of a dog
curled up in sleep in an iridescent
lake of snow, and a woman
standing in an orchard in her
slippers in the middle of a frigid
night in Winter, held by
moonlight, like a friend.
© 2012 J.M.Keating