But they mistook the brightness of the moon
For the prosaic light of day.
--Yeats
The rapid snick snick snick of grasshopper
Wings in the high grass. I’m dreaming.
I snap out of it--those hopes were ghosts.
I was too young to know, as I would later,
That I was too young. But here’s what’s real:
Treading the asphalt in August, the white heat
Above, the black heat below. It’s a kind of hell.
Jesus, another dream. But that snicking could be
Plucking, the action of this heart first, the faith
In what’s not real, what’s not known--there’s a trick.
When what’s hidden in the grass counts out
My time in ticks and the road is a prophesy,
I look up at the sun, see the moon, and know mercy.
