Still Gift of Night Moon

Still Gift of Night Moon

Full Moon  May 23, 2024

For our shared future

as we re-learn how to listen

& trust the dark to nurture us.

One night recently, before the moon rose

A world congress of insects awoke & gathered

Outside the screen of the empty shelter

Day birds bid goodbye & were supplanted

By an insect orchestra of small-scale expression

And a rat ran across the roof & another

Began to gnaw aluminum beneath the sink

And in my man-clothes upon a man-bed

I worried man-thoughts of rodents in my man-room

Sleeping hardly a man-wink until waking

Around a little before 4 in the empty house

With the most pregnant rich & generative silence

I have ever known seeping indigo & cool

Currents of stillness quiet-pulsing from outside

And it was only everything to lay there

Imagination fertile with this extraordinary nothing

For those moments were alone with me

And intended for all beings cognizant of stars

To soothe & replenish & bathe with dew

Each of the ten thousand grasses

Sprouting from every pore in space

This quiet nightly gift I sleep easily through

And would be wholly ignorant of

If not for the hunger of some

May all be fed.

Poem by Qayyum Johnson

Painting by Suiko McCall. Cultivate a Serious Attitude, 2022. Ink on paper, 9×12″. Prints available at suiko.art.