The Central Registry

      I slip two nights between the wooden slats.

      We store them upright

      to discourage warping.

      Because night has a memory.

      They are wrapped in brown paper,

      tied up snug with twine

      and surprisingly flat once folded.

      I label each one neatly with a permanent marker

      affixing a label to the spine for that very purpose

      and then move on

      to the moonlight

      which needs to be poured into an aquarium

      with a fungicidal solution.

      So much moonlight is sickly these days.

      Once, the twine broke

      on a night long ago

      and it started coming on—

      the paper burst

      with the snap of a small bore rifle

      and it unfurled

      like a black wing.

      The force of it split the pine of the storage rack

      and filled the warehouse with a pitchy blackness.

      It was a fine specimen, midwinter,

      late nineteenth century, moonless,

      cold as a brass bell and utterly still.

      You don’t see many nights

      like that anymore.

      Not that I’m nostalgic.

      This job brooks no sentiment.

      Not once you’ve smelled moonlight

      when it’s gone round the bend.