I prop up the dog and wait for him to pee.
Three a.m. A phrase goes floating through my head:
“A still Prussian-blue night with rather weak stars.”
In the dirt where summer scorched the lawn away
a puddle forms, burnt-umber summer that changed
the climate of feeling about climate change.
Weak stars because a fullish moon is climbing
into the sky like scandalous new talent
with no intention of inspiring envy,
climbing above the autumnal pergola
shedding butter- and claret-colored vine leaves,
sprung from a stock gnarled like an arthritic leg,
rotting at the core, propped up with a fence post.