On June nights I don a gown
of palm leaf peppered with red-
eyed, black-bodied, golden-winged
cicadas & their frenetic rasping.  

I sail over grass with feet the color
of grass, each toe a rough blade
pointing the way through waves
of meadow, & my heart—a ruddy
sailor—follows stars in the cloth of sky.  

From an oak tree whose leaves
are fingers tapping a breezy rhythm
on midnight stretched like a drum,
a crow in profile sings his sable song.  

No one knows about my nocturnal
traipsing or the quarter moon I carry,
even as it cuts my palms so they bleed
citrines & marigolds, sears them
with a light that blazes all the more  

blond for having fallen
from the witching hour.    

~inspired by Catrin Welz-Stein’s “The Sole Witness”