Thursday Poem: Summer Night

The night is so long, its pages so slow.
Who can read it?
Who can guess the final chapter,
or the afterword?

Moonlight is another story, of lovers mostly.
And starlight still another, of the heaven
we hope for in the haze of the heavens.

And there are little musics, sometimes,
as though the mockingbird, also, can't sleep.

If I step outside
I smell the grass, or the rain.
Or that purse of honey, another one awake—

the blue iris, so straight, so sweet-lipped.
Soft and alone in the dark.

Mary Oliver, Summer Night
(from Long Life)