LUNAR ARITHMETIC
Night performing its cold mathematics
The sky unscrews itself at dusk.
Blue drains from its veins
and the first star pricks through,
a sterile needle of light.
Soon the whole vault is freckled,
white wounds in the black hide of space.
They burn without warmth.
They stare without eyelids.
The moon lifts,
a bone-polished skull
hung carefully in the rafters of heaven.
It spills its chalk milk
over roofs and treetops,
over the thin shoulders of the sea.
