Dry spell

Tonight I find myself hungry for poetry Mary Oliver's ``American Primitive'' has just arrived and a tight verb in my throat starts to unwind. Her words are good, stout words, sturdy as golden, durable corduroy, words we grew up with clear as a night sky full of stars. They brought back all midnight hours when poems nudged me out of bed and tumbled on to the page, teasing the mind, stirring, brewing poems. Tonight the Hunter's Moon is out and I think of Indian moon names, Moon of the Silken Corn, Moon of Deer Dancing and so many other moons when my poems hid behind my eyelids. There were songs, whispered under the breath, but this is the first time since we are apart there is a singing, a hazy, faint hint of star music, and a tenuous trembling sentence, like leaves on a windless night, in my heart.