Road, and: Nocturnal

126 MAXINE CHERNOFF ROAD The muse of forgetfulness meets the muse of forgetting on an afternoon road. They wander together until a lamp intervenes, and the scene is erased. Late December’s dimness lifts the green toward sky’s smooth paper. The world is a camera. Words tie you to sparrows fence-colored in gardens of nothing past its season. Evening is a charm, its gold-threaded ending lost in the story. 127 MAXINE CHERNOFF NOCTURNAL Time and its “It was.” —Heidegger You are not alone in the catalogue, you with your hourglass and omens, your presumptions and solos. You are a catacomb, black letters on dark stone, a series of hereafters punctuated by night’s late pillow. Another you waits like a pair of shoes on a staircase. Nothing wears its history darker than a purse of midnight, winter’s hedge, astronomy’s fictions. Orbit unknown, principles tossed by gravity, you are your own island, your own Egypt, speckled egg in a nest of gray feathers. Eyes attuned to life’s curses and wax, its devotions and triptychs of blame. Glass stained and ripened by moonlight inscribed as thus, ‘a pearly veil welcomes you, traveler.’ ...