The Light in the Dark

The night sky clears with coolness of the air

As I hear footsteps on the sidewalk passing

Below my balcony.  A query of where,

That solemn sound through white sounds of solemn night,

A soothing noise, could this stroller be going

Arises in the mind, a distant light

Triangulating ears, a way of knowing:

Uncertain knowledge, fractiously imparted

Through the ears to the mind, where all this started.

Salubrious night, draw the shades and keep

These intricate suggestions till I sleep.

It could be there are answers of import

From alien evidence, meanings revised

When reviewed soberly by day, but now

Only half-known night thoughts emerge from shades

Peripherally, a far-off car alarm,

A barking dog, a tooting horn.  For whom

Are those a message? They intrude without

Connection, and from somewhere meaning comes,

Not random, intricately sensible,

From a collection of details compiled

Of intimate experiences so close

Even an absent lover's whisper is distant

Against it, this intrinsic faculty.

We miss what is not there but also make

From myriad memories, attenuated

By time and something more, a phantom world

Imbued with shades we know, inspired of wind

And sound, and stars, the diamonds of the mind,

Even as smoke rings stratify themselves

In this night's air, like avatars of clouds

Expelled of a lesser heaven against this sky,

Measured acutest at its vanishing.