Solstice

Something brought me wide awake at four. Groans

from the old house. The black dog running through the forest
of his dreams. Revving of a mind that won’t run idle.

So dressed and walked into December woods,
with the last leaves hanging on
and the fat moon making light of the rain.

Past the kissing gate, the gingerbread cottage,
a tractor taken root among the ferns,
and on over the stream. To the ropeswing,

where he swayed between
the man we thought he was and a darkness
that seeped back into every memory.

Eaten from the inside, the tree creaks
and sighs. Barely a bough, now,
strong enough to bear the weight,

but the longest night
for five hundred years, shrinks back
to a few pools, dark beneath the trees. Above,

rooks discuss their headlong commute. A kestrel
punctuates a phone wire, strung for movement.
And home again, tired and wet and cold,

carrying neither the hunter’s stillness
nor the flock’s sure purpose. Unconvinced and unconsoled,
yet the year’s morning yawning, and still unbroken.