Nighttime Reverie
When you look up, it seems the trees
Have been filled with dark birds,
Twitching their tails, bobbing up
And down in silence; across the scene
Glides a figure from some old story,
The kind told on nights just such as this,
Where a man is sent far away, farther
Than letters reach; where a woman waits
For him, patiently, impatiently;
Her family sits around their table, their faces
Flickering in candlelight, voices hushed;
She’s gone again, sitting underneath
A certain tree, collecting the black feathers
The birds pluck out and drop to her.
It takes ten thousand feathers, what she is making,
Which is either a dress or wings or maybe
A new body. But when she tries to count
How many feathers she’s been given, it seems
They fade into the night itself.
