Night

I cannot master the beauty of the night
—Maurice Leseman, A Man Walks in the Wind—

I enter night
not knowing night,
the welcoming night,
the steep, unscalable night.

The wind is high tonight
and the dying maple groans
or laughs (maybe at my fragility).
I wonder what it sees of night.

Will I ever be one with night?
Will I blunder off course,
my path unseen
beyond the next blind turn?

I persist into shadow and wind
and wonder why I can’t turn back
though lost on this sightless path
to the steep starless night.