The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

To get our bearings

On cold clear nights

We bundle up and walk the town

To refresh our spirits

And get our bearings

In this wheeling world

To locate in the glittering blackness

Of the star-spattered sky

Our old companions

Orion, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia

To taste the wet chilly air

And feel it work its way

Under our jackets and sweaters

To listen to the vivid silence

The leftover rain dripping from bare branches

A great horned owl

Hoo-ing in the oaks

And the faint chiming of midnight bells

From the tiny villages

Our breath makes