Gazing all night with the stars,
my neighbor’s porch light goes out,
and sudden squares of yellow spring
his house awake to morning news
from the darkening side of the world.
Three strokes of charcoal, like visible
thunder, mark a cobalt sky the south
wind drives its clouds across. Off
the Atlantic a single vapor stream,
self-erasing, pencils steadily north.
A shaken hoop of feathers, dawn sends
its message to your door in the jaw
of “fish-shaped Paumanok.” Meroke,
Wantagh, Massapequa, Syosset, Setauket,
Mattituck, Poosepatuck, Shinnecock,
Matinecock, Montauket…
By the old path, in the sacred way,
the runner goes, washed with dew,
armed with this day’s thirst. What
the Great Spirit wants us to know,
a stone in the mouth of the hunter