Song Before Dawn

In the dark, not the full dark,woken by the cold, pulling the coversup around my mouth, making a smallcavern of warmth, of living breath,sensing the over-under of my sleep-loosenedbraids—all my arms and legstangled around each other—I used tolie on this mountain, and Galway and Lucillewere dreaming nearby. I used to put onlayers and layers, by touch, and despitemy fear of being outdoors in the night—as if I were not a person but an occasion for violence—I would go outside, the sky black,as if, if there had been a God,it might have petted me on the head,like Galway in his scrupulous mercy toward me,like my chivalry toward him,and our confiding in each other like a child in the woodsconfiding, without language, in the needles and cones.In the dusk before first light, abovethe granite domes which look from here likepeaks but are the knees and hipbone crestsand clavicles, jaws, occipital archesunder the mountains’ fontanelles,the stars are still just visible,and in the binoculars clear and sharp—but despite holding the heavy lensesleaned against the stucco frame,my tremor shows each star swiftlywhirling in a white-gold ring, like Saturn’s,in one direction, then swerving, then the other,then an hourglass, a spiral, a bedspring—the starssparkler-tracing my shaking. And now,in the quietest moment, the voice it tookthe earth millions of years to speak,the vireo before first light. When my hands were steady, I would stand at Lucille’sshoulder, and softly, pluck, insects—nine-spotted lady beetle,giant crane fly, green darner,black snow mosquito—off hershoulder, nape, whitecap, and blow themout over the glacier-blue laketoward the place where we’re going, one by one,two by two, sometimes manyat a time, someday all together, as if reunited.