Once in a field, in a wide rising stretch of paintbrush <br /> & purple vetch, we stuck down <br /> <br />a tent, like punctuation, and drank through the evening <br />our bottle of bad wine. When you looked up, <br />the weather was holding: a few breezes, <br /> <br />a full moon silvering the flowers <br /> <br />to white. In the distance, I heard the ache <br />& slide of snow, the beginning of crickets. It was twilight— <br /> <br />the landscape was lifting. <br /> <br /> • <br /> <br /> A mountain. The clouds, further up, <br />came down. A Book of Hours. A tent in which we twisted, <br />pressed each against the other, drunk <br /> <br />and when I stepped out into the cool <br />moonlight, there was drifting through the watery <br />end of the meadow, a deer <br /> <br />pale beneath pines, beneath those soaring <br />darknessess. Then there was only darkness, the <br />idea of a deer. <br /> <br /> Remember, I never wanted <br />to be alive, to have <br />an outline. Better, I knew, to slip <br /> <br />unheld, an opening into mist.<br /><br />Kate Northrop<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/late-aubade-amp-explanation/
