Arcturus

“He remembers the hallmen
and the giving of treasure. . . .”

–The Old English Wanderer

Overhead somewhere,
The dark of the moon weighs itself invisibly upon the air.
The street below gives off no light,
As though in the general grief nothing will ignite.
In that hour of the humid darkness
When the dead wake up in the sleep of the living,
The house is unconscious where long ago he
Who once set his table against my enemies
Moved away in unexplained anger.
Nothing moves here now except
A car I think I have heard before
Passing away down a distant highway
Or the wind shifting its position in a tree.
The house is not moved and does not remember me.
Nothing receives my figure fixed at the opening of the bitter-flowering
   hedge.
There at my coming the crickets stop.
The air grows cold with the afterlife.
In an attic window, deep in reflection, like a distant day,
A star is left burning
Centuries away.

–April 13, 1991

(“Arcturus” appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of Kimera, Spokane WA.)