A Poem

A Little Night Music

By: Clem Schoenebeck 

In the transparent dark of a New Hampshire night, stars and constellations

brush the tops of trees, shining big and white, like an unblemished soul.

My face tilts to the haze of The Milky Way, the regal glare of Orion’s sword, Perseid’s Shooting Stars, which dazzle and die, in the blink of an eye.

High in the hills I hear, ow-ooh, from the lead coyote, a pause, then pure-pitched echoes sung by the Alpha’s answering chorus.

I turn to the singers, my head thrown back, arms like a maestro leading a hymn.

Ow-ooh, I howl, glancing off Owww, lifting nearly an octave to Ooh...

Somewhere between mountain and stars, they answer Ow-Ooh, holding the Oooohhh in a long thread of sound, a layering of distant harmonies...

Above the stunning silence, the Celestial Assembly stirs, then glows, glitters and shimmers in Heavenly ovation…

 Title borrowed from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik published in Aurorean, 2010