Summer Night

Summer Night


1.
Summer exhales fireflies.
The half-moon drifts
in a charcoal sea.
Bite marks
on the moon's torso
are testimonials
for each time
she bobbed below the surface
like a saint without feet.
At 9:34 PM a neighbor
sweeps his porch
with a short stubby broom.
The moon sinks
behind a cloud.
Fireflies are lost.
The street lamp
raises a fist
of ice
when a dead moon rolls by
in the empty bed
of a pick-up truck.

2.
Air conditioners surround
the garden,
where the cabbages
are fast asleep
and the beets
receive
in-laws

3
from the grave.
One block away
a single locust emerges.
The moon is a ground hog
living beneath
our white shed.
She dines on white egg shells,
Antiguan coffee grounds.
Suddenly the creepers
with their long-legged chatter
call back and forth
across yellow hedges,
across the traffic
and air-conditioners,
across the impossible bones,
across railroad tracks
and political myths,
across the illuminated
bodies of Native Americans,
Afro-Americans,
Asian-Americans,
and, of course,
those blasted Irish
with their interminable shame
and beautiful persistence,
also, Greek-Americans
and French roots
clanging below
the green hurricanes
of Baton Rouge
whose swamps
and ancient alligators
include witches inside
the straw-colored bellies
of those dreaming reptiles!

4.
The cab driver is really nervous
when he pulls
into the yard.
It seems the moon
has given birth
to a clutch
sprawled
all over his backseat.
The cab driver is summoned
on his radio.
He begins drinking white wine
and dipping shrimp
into the humidity
of this summer night.

5.
Unfortunately, the paperwork
required for the recent wave
of deaths
is overwhelming
and I am unable
to assist the cab driver
in any fashion.
More neighbors arrive;
they are not
the moon's undertakers
so they pretend
not to notice
the cab driver
drunk from exhaust
or even his cab
illuminated by its
clutch of infant moons.
Such is the strange
behavior of neighbors.

6.
In any event
a car door closes
like a clam shell,
cicadas roar
through the forests
of the night
and a giant spruce
whose head rises
above the sky's ashes
is looking for her husband
last seen strolling
through darkness
with the half-moon.

Alan Britt

Posted over on Coe Review