after Lawrence Raab

are not like the wee hours,
where anything might happen or already has—

or the blousy hours of early morning,
the sheets taut under sail through the long reach

of daylight hours, until you arrive, once more,
at the still, blue harbor of evening.

In the small hours, you drift alone
on your raft of felled palms, weightless

between black fathoms above and
below, as between two eternities.

And this is their terror and their bliss—
the small, pure hours beyond reckoning

where no one is looking for you,
the stars beginning to make sense again

and, at the edge of the darkest hour,
a siren, keening you toward that fabled land

whose god rises daily in the east, strewing
the ground with gold for the taking.

Photo by Bill Anderson-Blough on Unsplash