Madonna and Headlamp

Dateline Castle Valley

Utah, 5am:

we're lucky here.

Stars radiate

at eye level

from our mattress,

filling our solid wall

of bedroom window

with (choose your own trope)

diamonds on black velvet,

the princely diadem of night,

black feather headdress of gods,

all the gifts a high desert sky

can offer grubby human eyes,

and I watch

for hours

while my loves

lie snoring softly,

mother and infant daughter,

until that infant daughter

snorts and cries,

just as the lavender

slips into the house of stars,

the fox of morning stealing

the tiny bright eggs of night,

and my wife, broody,

sits up, statuesque shadow,

hunched up among the stars,

and pulls on a small

headlamp for camping,

switches on its white dot

of light like a low star

shining from her forehead,

picks up our grumbling daughter,

whose round head rises

full moon like

in the white light

of the lamp,

and curls her motherly shadow

around the little pool

of lights, our local dreaming,

in this lavender morning,

to nurse

hope back

to sleep.