The Note Closet

Night, and I need a white road.
I’m not nocturnal enough
To find my way in the dark.

More than I walk, I linger.
I wait while the moon comes up.
I listen to all the notes

Shelved in these woods around me,
More information, more ghosts
Than I could ever notice,

Cerebral phosphorescence
Few poets hunt anymore,
Knowledge no one needs to know.

My woods are booke-invention,
The arca studiorum,
Scrinium literatum.

Real woods were cut to make them.
They are the woods of wonder,
Words of unknown origin,

Lovely, silent in themselves,
Often deep, each one a trunk
Rooted, surrounding their tarns

Pooled in the lap of the hills,
One kind of a magic trick,
The closest to real magic,

Meanings from meaninglessness,
Terms used to describe events
No one yet experienced.

Starlight makes the mountains strange,
Just absences in the night.
Their lesser darkness looms huge

In close and small perspective
Against the spiraling show
With greater darkness in tow.

If you could kindly find me
The moment when the white road
Starts and set me on my way,

I will unlatch this closet
And display all the labels
Of every starlit wonder,

My botanical garden
Of esoteric knowledge
About the ghosts of meaning,

The darkness in the mountains,
The woods in the swirls of stars,
The white roads out of nothing.