Music in the Night
written by: Debra Elramey
It is rainy and cold.
Temperature hovers between twenty
and twenty-three degrees – ten
less with the wind-chill factor.
I’m sequestered from the sting
of night, fetus-tight in all this warmth,
curled up with Applewhite’s River Writing,
Beethoven’s Romance. Let the rain
outside freeze into ice.
On time, Sleepers Awake.
I take to my late night travels
with man and his lonely landscape,
stare as brightness unveils.
His sun, a copper pan, melts
the bitter mist. His hands, full
of huckleberry leaves,
to him seem tropical fish.
I’m aware of birds stirring
in bushes, the movement of squirrels
or deer. I hear the murmuring tongues
of streams, inhale the green
of cedar and pine. Feel Eno’s foam
like a balm on my feet.
Here in this likeness of paradise
I grow wise. What am I
in this garden of creation
but a mere blade of grass in a patch
of field, a speck of jonquil blown
with wind like a speeding cloud
or a peaceful dream? At the sound
of Bagatelle or Fur Elise, eyelids
grow leaden. I fall from Eden
into exile of sleep.
- Music in the Night - April 27, 2026
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