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A Midnight Clear

Now that the festive singers are gone
and only the single star remains
sharp and distant, why recall
when women came caroling at night,
dressed in caps and gowns dark
as the air around them? Allowed to stand
inside where rough winds only reached
my ankles, a rising tide and undertow
too slow to harm me then, I watched
their mouths go round to bursting notes
they flung in eddies, and when a singer
saw me she smiled, keeping time
to her inner rhythms. I leaned into music
and air, leaned into night beyond
their lanterns and capes and tousled hair
where a moon shrugged against the clouds
and that single star impaled was a note
pitched too high to hear, burning
and burning as if it might be a sign,
the bright and shining point of a knife.


T. Alan Broughton

Sou'wester
Fall 2008

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