0029 This Night, This Night Of Endless Miracle Poem by Michael Shepherd

On this Mediterranean night with its light breeze
scented with the sun-warmed herbs
drifting down from cooling, stony hills,
a million stars you’ve never seen before
shine on a million crickets singing
as if from eternity to eternity

and you cannot say, and there’s
no need to say, which is which;
the trembling of the stars,
the susurration of cicadas,
join as in endless praise
of the imagination of their maker
who made imagination too

and though the cicadas, singing, may never know
that the stars they sing to
are shining from a thousand years ago
and though the stars may never know
that the cicadas that they shine upon
are a thousand years here from their now,

it’s all known, to the mind that made the vines
that made the grapes that made the wine
singing in my veins tonight
like cicadas susurrating in the starlight
as you hear them now
this night, this night of endless miracle