Waiting in the Night

I waited.

Like everyone else,

We knew where to find each other.

Here.

The moon was pale.

Between half and full. 

Its imperfections stark

Yet complete in its beauty.

The stars hardly revealed themselves

Shy of all the city lights.

But I had once seen them shimmer

When the city was quite. 

As I lay there waiting

Below the garish orange

Of the night sky,

The mosquitoes buzzed like

They had elicited the

Messages of the universe.

They didn't want my drowsy presence

To interfere with their

Profound connection. 

They prodded me incessantly

Perhaps now sick of sweet ooze

That flowed from starved lovers. 

The moon glided over the sky slowly.

Sometimes the clouds 

Behind which it hid

would race up between its edges-

Splitting and coalescing like thoughts.

Their shifting silhouettes were

Reminiscent of storms in the sea

On which a small white ship

Bravely kept afloat.

The concrete was lit up

By soft and ethereal beams.

Perhaps it was that month of the year

When even milk turned to elixir

If it bathed in the moonlight.

My hands,

Stained with grey concrete,

Reached to cup this

Half orb in my palms.

Its white halo

Almost

Drowned the pestilence 

Of the city below. 

Perhaps the illusion of 

Touch 

Would make me believe 

In the fantasies of love

Created by fiction and poetry.

Perhaps 

I could submit myself

To their illusions of

Courage, pathos

Ardour and tranquility.

There it was in my hands,

Something so very different 

Bound to the Earth by the same force

Made by the same elements.

There was a deep understanding

That settled like dust

Between the two of us.

Thousands of years of broken lives

Became mine

Billions of seconds of true bliss

Became mine

In that moment

When everything blurred

And

I no longer needed to reach into air.

The warm wetness in the wind

Mixed the sweet with the smoke.

I felt giddy

As I saw Venus blazing from afar

Even in the heaviest smog.

As moonbeams still touched my skin,

My eyes closed.

Everything real

And imaginary combined 

Into what absolved my thoughts

Purged them 

And then plunged them 

Into a darkness

Where there was

Incandescence.

When I awoke

I heard a murmur from the trees.

The sky had split into a pale blue

And my moon had slipped away.

Perhaps

It would sleep with a new memory.

Or Perhaps

It would intoxicate another continent.

But,

The night would still fill me 

As light would fill the day.

So

I waited.

Like some people,

I knew where to find myself. 

Here.