HENRY SHEERWATER
Poem—'At new moon'
      

i am stilled by doubt
            not idling like the machine at traffic lights
                        waiting on compulsion
            nor held taut with urgent messages
                        like the power lines
           and not anxiously shouting, No!
                        like that high brick wall.

i look out through glass
           across the street
                        to stiffly swinging insects levering clay
                        onto the back of a centipede
                        tended by distant bipedal scurryings,
           and i am still.

i am
           the brown crisp of unbelief
                        curling in a gutter,
           the dusky orange ephemera
                        on high grey cloud,
           the slim horns of silvery dilemma
                        lagging behind a late sun
                        and suspended in a puddle.