Night God

Photo by Akin Cakiner on Unsplash

I am listening to the milky way,
gnawing on the softest frog skin.
He shakes off the glow and
slips under the water, a coin
carefully dropped.

I can hear his little legs kicking
at the assembled stars on the surface,
creating minute splashes until they
flutter away in ripples, shimmering
with glee.

I can see the caiman’s eye flicker in
the deep, a gemlike sexton’s torch
regarding the windswept riverbank;
its bush master’s body.

The night grows so heavy, it swells
and clots to a humming curd.
Everywhere, its embrace forms the
inside of a fevered mouth.
What comes out, but dreams
covered in bite marks.

O thick, brackish night,
if all the world should cease now,
will you go last? tell me what is
whispered in that terrible silence.

You who came before the light,
tell me whose god you harbour.
Where will the prayers go when I sink
my head in the river? When I rise,
buoyant and look up to find only
you staring back at me.