Scendere

I crouch between hours hung limp and fresh
as laundered bedsheets on a line, reining in the dawn

an unstill quiet between an ever-shout of river and source,
learning all I can with hands, mouth, voice.

The night is warmed by a sun who has forgotten it is August,
its first attendants’ cheeks the very blush of pears on the tree

in the first garden terrace – a tree older than me by a century –
yet young and alive with the roosting birds of its fruit.

The last of the dark reels in its nightspell and the garden
becomes suddenly knowing, restless, gloaming with

cats, foxes, a frog on the doorstep the size of my boot;
grapes like amethyst hang hot and low in the arbour, and it is

a lifetime ago, already, the word that launched the owl of my heart into the hunter’s night:
Scendi!

The Aubade is a morning serenade – or lament for the end of the night and the coming of morning.