Hilltops

here we are for one last night
to hold the heavens off
with copses at the ends
of our planet’s curving trough,
stars surrounding bends
at the edges of the eye’s
reflected light,
only wind and river in the sky,
blurred by bursts of growing night,
the way the countryside
was bathed in moonlit white
so many years ago,
frozen now in icy pearls
to chiaroscuro,
long-gone worlds
making here, before we sleep,
cosseted by aspen, star,
and cloud, the endless meadow
of dark matter far
beyond our souvenirs—
childhood, silence, summer sweep
one last minute on the lawn,
before the real world disappears
again at dawn.