Whither

I walk in circles at midnight in my bare feet on fresh laid asphalt.

The katydids are calling from black trees all around me.

The moon is a quarter million miles away, hidden behind drifting clouds.

I know that the moon is an airless sphere of dust and rock.

I know this fact as much as I know anything.

But, there, just over the sharp edge of black leaves in stillness up against a dull gray sky,

I see a fuzzy pale edge of moonlight against ice crystals.

After several paced circles more, an opening of deep space appears in the drifting clouds.

How can this be?

The moon is alive.

And I can feel the sun itself still lingering through the soles of my bare feet on material first laid down millions of years ago.

I walk on.

But now I must ask you to trust me on this next part:

If you come upon a bunny sitting in wet grass and weeds,

you can look deeply into it eye reflecting streetlight

and you will blink first.

But if you approach the same rabbit, however slowly,

you will eventually see the bright cottontail hopping off into the shadows.

Whither the moon?

Whither the eye of the rabbit?

Whither the eyes of my two bare feet after midnight?

And then pages turn.

And then after steps that no one will count,

the ice in my glass on the counter still clinks in the dark

after I step back through my own back door.

And then – one last scene – and you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to –

a cricket crawls on cracked concrete when I flick on the light down in my basement.

The clock hanging crooked on the wall ticks the seconds away.

My arthritic big toe still throbs a little.

But yet you should have seen that cricket jump when I stuck out my own big toe.

Whither the cricket?

Whither the clock?

Whither the darkness and the light?

I’m still thirsty for ice water.