I have no claim on you. I am one star You have as guide

I go to the door often. 

Night and summer. Crickets 

Lift their cries. 

I know you are out. 

You are driving 

Late through the summer night. 

 

I do not know what will happen. 

I have no claim on you. 

I am one star 

You have as guide; others 

Love you, the night 

So dark over the Azores. 

 

You have been working outdoors, 

Gone all week. I feel you 

In this lamp lit 

So late. As I reach for it 

I feel myself 

Driving through the night. 

 

I love a firmness in you 

That disdains the trivial 

And regains the difficult. 

You become part then 

Of the firmness of night, 

The granite holding up walls. 

 

There were women in Egypt who 

Supported with their firmness the stars 

As they revolved, 

Hardly aware 

Of the passage from night 

To day and back to night. 

 

I love you where you go 

Through the night, not swerving, 

Clear as the indigo 

Bunting in her fight, 

Passing over two 

Thousand miles of ocean. 

 

[Robert Bly {1926-2021} 'The Indigo Bunting', from Collected Poems]