We three sat
on the stoop
on Thursday night
eating watermelon.
Our Georgian brick
building
crouched behind us,
the front door held open
by someone’s flip-flop.

The day had been hot,
and when it began
to rain,
the sidewalk steamed
with every drop

until there were no more
drops but the evening’s
deafening applause
and silver spears of rain
shattering themselves
on the wet-black street.

We piled our melon rinds
in mixing bowls
and all stood
wordlessly
to go.

We had talked that night
as students do;
ambling about,
trying new things out:
Pater, Pound,
Benjamin, Foucault.

Distracted now and then,
we watched a desperate moon
clamber gently
up an arching oak
and jump
in the sad, still way
that moons
so often do.

In the silences
of our conversation,
the locusts stirred their thrum,
shrill and urgent,
talking one to the other—
or one to all—
in the noisy communion
that is a Virginia night.

Nighttime’s business
had halted, though,
to let the sky be unburdened.

In the rain’s roar,
our watermelon all but gone
and Baudelaire
(for the moment)
spent,
we'd grown unexpectedly
silent
as if to note
something sacred
in the night.