I.

it is a dark and stormy night.

it is nights like these when
                               things
                                        happen--
ordinary nights, in the grand scheme
        of nights,
        even dark and stormy ones.
therefore
i am not speaking of christmas eve,
        when the snow howls down a festival of fiery lights,
or of midsummer's night,
        when light and heat spill over into harvest,
and not of all hallow's eve,
        another night for boundaries of light and dark.
no, i mean nights like this,
thursdays,
        perhaps, or saturdays sometimes,
and it's raining again, great washes of rainwater beating
        against the windowpanes,
        reflecting tiny shards of the lamps indoors,
        inside the doors,
        reflecting through the windows to turn
        the black water in the black sky on a black night to simple
                                        rain.

i'm retreating, pounded into submission by the rain.
curled into my warm hollow like a wounded animal.
as a wounded
                animal.
i need to be alone to
                        gnaw at my wounds,
to live or die
                alone.
sometimes at night i hear geese flying overhead
                halfway around the world.
wild geese.
there's a fragment of a round i once sang,
                a small loop of memory, which goes like this:
 'dip dip and swing her back            flashing like silver
  follow the wild goose track            dip dip and swing'
and i think of it when i hear them crying overhead
and i know that
                things
                        are happening again.
i don't know why i crave aloneness at night.
i do know:
        self-confidence--
        a warrior's solitary trials--
        classic vision questing--
but what i don't know is
                        why
                        really.

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