Under a Full Moon at Midnight

This is a paean to relief and ecstasy. A man's poem of course—the electric ah! in the long stream arcing a rainbow under the spotlight moon, a covenant between mv body and the earth's. I think of Li Po smiling silently on Green Mountain and can hear Rumi drunk on rapture—drink my brother he calls to me, think of the elephant loosening a great ebullient stream that floats a river past your house and drop turds so immense you could build a hut from them along the shore to shelter your children. What release! Think of your child pedaling under your hand and of a sudden—it just happens—you let go and he's off on his own, free for that first time— the achieve of, the mastery of the child. See the stalwart trees in their silence the stones resting in the driveway, the cat curled asleep on the front porch, the smear of blood on the lion's mouth sitting over his fresh gazelle the morning paper and its stories shouting for attention. The plenitude of it all. And perhaps somewhere a friend is dreaming of me, or someone a stranger is peeing ecstatic under the same moon. A covenant then between us. True or not. It is no matter.