No sky could hold so much light - and here comes the brimming, the flooding and streaming out of the clouds and into the leaves, glazing the creeks, the smallest ditches! And so many stars! The sky seems stretched like an old black cloth; behind it, all the celestial fire we ever dreamed of! And the moon steps lower, quietly changing her luminous masks, brushing everything as she passes with her slow hands and soft lips - clusters of dark grapes, apples swinging like lost planets, melons cool and heavy as bodies - and the mockingbird wakes in his hidden castle; out of the silver tangle of thorns and leaves he flutters and tumbles, spilling long ribbons of music over forest and river, copse and cloud - all heaven and all earth.
~ Mary Oliver, "Harvest Moon – The Mockingbird Sings in the Night,” in TWELVE MOONS