Signature

This is a rolling night: pushes up to car windows,

breathes on them, writes its name, writes mine. 

To sound night’s name is to know the lungsong

 

of wafting grocery bags—the clean bells 

of jellyfish contracting. In the river of a street, 

I play my legs like long white keys at the far ends 

of an octave. The black keys are bats, caping high,

each preying cry a note, a whole page of gnat notes 

a whole alphabet—notes like O and U and Y.

These drab street yellows are a chord. These phone

lines are ledger. There is a treble-clef tree. I am 

the rest; the fermata moon is holding, holding.