Donate Now
The Night Watch
It’s 1 a.m. and someone’s knocking
at sleep’s old, battered door —
and who could it be but this boy I love,
calling for me to come out, into
the buckthorn field of being awake —
and so I go, finding him there
no longer talking — but now crying
and crying, wanting to be held;
but shhh, what did you want to show
that couldn’t wait until the morning?
Was it the moon — because I see it:
the first good bead on a one-bead string;
was it the quiet — because I owned it,
once — but found I wanted more.
From Noctuary. Reproduced with kind permission of Bloodaxe Books.