Today's poem is by Melissa Kwasny

Nocturne
       

Outside town, past the house of the carpenter,
a house he built with his own hands,
at night, the stream is louder for no witnesses
but the white-tail deer who descend to drink
and the low, unseen creatures who rustle
under leaves that seem to gleam despite the dark.
I have always wanted to live in a second story.
Like many women my age, I do not sleep well.
Pill bottles line my cabinet like little dancers
ready to perform. Nightlights glare like sterile stars.
A solitude watched is a solitude interrupted.
Yet I sometimes wish for those I would be happy
to encounter on these streets, the spring twilight
in no hurry to leave. As if I were granted
an extra hour, an extraneous room, and I found
others there, too, in good moods, like mine,
after drinking. The carpenter, for instance,
how we stood together, four nights before he died,
admiring the hand-hewn logs, the dove-tailed
corners. Yes, I am building a piano, he said.
A door opened and a festive light poured through,
onto me, onto the crowd gathering behind us.

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Copyright © 2024 Melissa Kwasny All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission