Pastoral after Dark
(for Poetry Church)
with red wine
minestrone brie and bread
and stunned night bugs
breaking themselves open
against the porch light because
that's how things are
and the poets
grateful at table
to be with poets
this night, with their good
gab of poets, poems, the broken
world, and in the holly
in the crape myrtle
just there by our window
the wrens must by now
be sleeping
