The Hermit’s Complicity

Big moon bright in broken clouds,
Crickets and poorwills crying
On an empty road tonight

In clear air in the mountains,
Postcard-perfect loneliness—
What can you do with beauty

In the moments you’re in it,
With you and your times dying,
Everything on fire somewhere,

Every moonlit breath a cloud
Complicit with agony?
So many lives are dying

And what are you doing here
But dying apart from them?
Don’t you want to be with them?

No. For now, your own dying,
Made of living and breathing,
Remains glad for the moonlight.