The Better to Drink

Amber segues the speedway at night
and lamps apace illuminate naught
but glistening pavement trailing away;
superfluity of silence and space
coyotes yammer in, pigeons sleep-talk.

What's unfulfilled from day collates
in the hollows of bat ears, acoustic
grottos - the waiting wealth of prayer;
the singing of the coin down the well,
the soggy wool of somnolent clouds,

the stripes down the spine of the skunk.
Dark enriches that prolongs the thirst,
the better to drink the daily of day.
Young John held back to let old Peter
go first, into the empty, tingling cave.