Doug Ramspeck

The moon tonight is falling
into the chimney of the neighbor's house

in the way that we believe we speak
to the years behind us,

whisper to them of the miraculous passage
of the hours. And if the moon knows

to whisper back, it is in the language
of stone walls and the scaffolding

of bones inside our bodies, this hinge
that never opens but is forever at the ready.

And the moon, tonight, seems to be
leaning its shoulder into the neighbor's roof,

and the house seems to be leaning its shoulder
into the darkness of the sky,

and I am thinking of how we slept so often
those first years with our legs and arms entwined.

Your hair, then, was a black veil spreading its ink
around us, some calligraphy like a sentence

sprawling and sprawling over decades,
becoming languorous with meaning.

And if the moon out the window
is the shape of a wheel ghosting some dark prairie,

what shape are we leaning
against a window sill?