Less Day

LESS DAY
for Hugh Thomas

The night walks through the day. People mistake it for shadows until the moon bumps into a cop. “I’ve been following you,” either the cop or the moon says, but it is the moon that is imprisoned. Yes, say the keys to the prison cell, the moon shining between the bars, the jailhouse is a forlorn zebra, the zebra, the keys of the piano dreaming of running free. If the water of the world has a god, is it cloud, or steam, or whiskey? The policeman’s shirt is a memory of blue water, blue sky, or Robert Johnson parking his Model T just anywhere, in a tree, the sky, or in that crease that always itches way back behind my left ear. Of course in Norway, night is just another word for less day.