Drinking With My Notebook, Part 1: July 4, 2010

11:00 PM
Venus is in the west, low and hot.
Juniper and pine play their perfect fifth.
The stream is running, our guests are stumbling
in groping pairs through the dog-yard gate.
The wine was perfectly adequate.

12:00
I am writing this by blankest moonlight,
by what could not warm the moon,
by what its cauterized dust could not absorb.
This wrecks me because I am drunk.

1:00
Better to get up and help you
shut in the chickens, wash a few glasses,
brush my teeth. Better to set aside
this notebook and drop my clothes
and dive down to our bathyspheric house
at the bottom of the night.

2:40
This valley is full of black. The coral looks like
juniper and pine. Barracudas draped in dog-skins
hunt in packs. Schools of moths
recite Goethe's last words. We will surface
at sunrise and have to inhale.