Beside the road in the dark, I pulled off, stopped to listen to my heart slow. My eyes grew to the haze-light, the dark-night subtle shadows, altogether. I wrote: The shadow of my pen this line makes in the dark by the moon I don’t know where. I have the mood to paint these shadows of trees these shadows I see. I saw black gravel, tar road, yellow through the black, weeds and grass, then the dirt-dark, brown of earth grows black grass and bushes, almost green before the trees, whose leaves frame shlhouette holds deeper through against the blue dark sky, and stars glitter the moon picture, yellows the dark hills, beyond. All around Somewhere past those trees my love is sleeping (How can I know where?) What is this moon such meager light through the trees? What is this moon an excuse to call me on? I can barely see, but get out of my car. Walking, melodramatic: Fuzziness: Darkness, darkness. Darkness! Soft with different textures for trees. Darkness with blue for sky, and leaves, with green, with yellow for grass. Darkness with brown for bark. Only darkness between the colors, only darkness. Darkness, their only medium. Darkness is the moonlight silvering on the field grass. Darkness is the distant train sound, the smell of earth, in the breeze the quick chill breathed of nothing seen, clearly. But in the woods the bugs are silent, and the cow, afraid of the moon, moos to the stars’ patterns. The cow’s alone in the field. I can’t be sad. Profound is more like it. Somewhere past, all that, my love is sleeping.
October 1971