I Know You
Originally appeared in the chapbook The Execution (1991)
Oh you incredible night plopped with houses winking at the moon, your banister a knapsack of hilltop goods pleated with jacks…
I know you from eons of memory, the bands of seamless life that I rambunctiously am. I know the electric smiles of your windows and glittered twirls burning from thickets like pine knots-turned-rockets; I know your rough game of marbles and chimneys jangling like leopard eyes; and I know that chuckle of cream you tilt and spatter just for me like a bookcased dream unfrozen and sailing down the hillside.
Oh you rowdy sweet thing of-a-night with lips upon the barn, goosing legends and country jokes, exulting in strokes of township butts decked with calico; you burly beauty dynamiting the goofy praxis of matter and time, slinging your flashlights into carrot-hued homes entranced with libraries, varnishing the crust of these almandine territories; nighty-night night uplifting my precious pines like buttered rutabagas, combing stars with syrupy rye and dousing orchards with your pixie eyes; oh-God night yanking me through lost loops of memory, roaring and squalling me like a timeless baby as it seizes shacks and trailers with arms of horsesugar and sweetgum spice…
Yes I know you, night turning cartwheels across the map of this unfettered life…
David Thomas Roberts (1991)
