Moon Clock by Donald Hall

Like an oarless boat through midnight’s watery

ghosthouse, through lumens and shallows

of shadow, under smoky light that the full moon

reflects from snowfield to ceilings. I drift

on January’s tide from room to room, pausing

by the wooden clock with its pendulum that keeps

the beat like a heart certainly beating, to wait

for the pause allowing passage

to repose’s shore—where all waves halt

upreared and stony as the moon’s Mycenaean lions.