Cashmere Night

The cashmere night fell soft,
drifting, flowing,
draping the shadowed mountain
in an elegant onyx robe,
filling canyons and crevices,
painting jagged stone bluffs in deep, rich blackness.
Soon the gift of quiet followed,
the noise and clatter of the day
subdued and finally
silenced.

We watched the sun slowly
sink into a watery horizon,
last rays becoming shafts of
dusky gold.
We hummed a simple tune,
wordless accompaniment to day's departure,
until I realized that my sound alone
bade farewell to the visible.
You slept.  So gracefully, as if you had
been swept from my arms and
carried away with the last notes of
the fading song.

Gently, so gently I lifted you from the
warm grass and, like an acolyte carrying all
that is sacred, I walked along the
moonlit path to the place where
earth and heaven embrace.
You smiled once, still deep in sleep.
And the vast sweep of stars, newly arrived in the
infant night, ceased their twinkling
in deference to the sheer delight
of looking upon your face.