The Night Rolls In...

 

The night rolls in obliterating dusk

A silent sea of musky solitude

The breeze, by noon a fellow, brawny, brusque

Reclines beyond the slope, chaste and subdued

Against the skyline stricken silhouettes

Of June’s nocturnal choir stands erect, mute

The whisper of enchanting minuets

Have fallen to the croon of autumn’s flute

The quiet like a satin mantle drapes

Its edges over midnight’s maudlin shapes

Before my eyes a strange menagerie

Of moments chant an off-beat pantomime

As fragment-echoes of vague memory

Awaken; with such disregard for time

But now beneath the vast moon-spangled night

The past drifts to me, surreal, like a mist

Yet oh, to reach and touch; I cannot quite

Or feel that place where youth recklessly kissed

Our naive mouths; while we were full of dreams

Without a second thought of moment-streams

Here on the hem of midnight’s onyx veil

A madrigal of moments taunt, beseech

The sable skyline soon once more will pale

And pluck the baby from its mother’s reach

The ambiance of autumn sheds its coat

In russet rivers garnishing the earth

Love stings the eye and aches within the throat

For surely this is life’s singular worth

To love and to be loved; it is too much

The night rolls in; I hunger for your touch

© Janet Martin