Midnight Walk

For Jean
A three-quarter moon beacons each hill, luring us …
Mostly, thick branches close the space above our heads.
Feet find their way, somehow, over roots and stones;
knees adjust to the shifting angles of earth.
In our ears, the backs of our necks, resound the calls
of nightbirds — the owl's looped echo rippling out
across midnight's coolness; that jarring bird
we cannot name with its strong wing-flaps creaking,
abrasive as its talon-voice, indifferent to any answer.
Back at our starting point, you tender, as if in ritual,
five blackberries — fruits plucked by torchlight
in a remembered place, held in your cupped palm
for half a mile — an offering to the night as well as us.
We bundle into the car, wrenching away from that silence:
a oneness absorbing all murmurs, cries; magnifying
the crackle of a scraped leaf until it fills the night.