Shady

At night under porch-lit branches,
Under branches lit by street lamps,

Looking up at their dark patterns
Among their lit-up silhouettes,

You can’t see hardly any space
Between them for the sky—maybe

A star, possibly a planet,
A passenger jet’s passing lights,

If that, but nothing else—a mass
Of leafed, late-summer canopy.

If you stick around to morning,
You may notice how the sky grows

With its own increasing daylight
Picking out the canopy’s holes

Until the most that you could say
For the leaves is that they’re shady.