a powdery crescent daymoon rises
in the north, and the sky is fragile, and
cold, and quiet of birds – snow melts
into the dirt with a sound like vinyl
sizzling under the needle and footsteps
beat like muffled mallets over the deerskin
head of the ground in no particular
rhythm, in no particular hurry

an insistent vacuum-black moon rises
to dot out the sun, and the sky is fragile, and
cooler, and the night frogs begin their
confused choruses unconfidently, if we
can say anything as complicated of the frog,
while the locusts call to one another
dispassionately, automatically, and unafraid
and i am indoors, asleep, like some dumb bird