Skip to main content

Why the Moon Needs a Nap

Whose turn is it to watch for paradise? - Sarah Ann Winn

With first slip of daylight, I let loose hounds
of dark roast to a  growling grinder, cracking
the quiet of thick frost and apricot overcast.  
My black dog stretches in sun salute as we meet
a crescent moon. She looks a bit ragged and thin.

Winter slows many things, sap and squirrels, but
not the brooding of poets and farmers - incessant
is their surveillance.  The moon needs a nap, drapes her face
with cirrus clouds; tries to overlook the millstones:
neap tides, menses, frazzled lunatics – tugging, tugging, tugging.

No wonder Selene stumbles narcoleptic spring to fall.
No wonder with each waning crescent, her sagacious gifts
surrender to rain. She needs a nap. There are blueprints
to dream for April,  and a naked winter world
expects night escort, November to Spring.  

No wonder Diana croons in the vernal chirr of peeper and toad.
Even beside groundhogs, she’d lay, seek a sluggish eclipse,
to catch a month of winks. She deserves a nap. Keep in mind,
we want her ready to romance a juicy May and June. Then, hold
her fixed with second wind for equinox, light steady for long harvests.

I’m holding my moon vigil this morning until the ghostly thumbnail
evaporates out of sight, but not out of mind. And tomorrow
it’s a quiet cup of PG Tips, I’ll sip, try to keep the ruckus down.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year.   We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China,   four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats.   We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices.   We have had little or no contact with them so far.   Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.   It’s Iowa and the gove...

Likely Liable

Daylight cracks its brittle seam snapping apart a wish bone night. Venus has mounted Jupiter already headed for the barn; water simmers in a cracked kettle, just enough for two. And you, dark man, curled like a leather belt in the back of a dresser drawer, unfurl; I’m curled too, like paperback pages in August; we’ll meld mauve dreams and first light. I study you like a self portrait, you hover pretending to understand the chaos of shoes about the room, they lay like punctuations, a tactile Morse Code. I study these dots and dashes, you haunt my sleepy head; we crawl under apostrophes behind question marks. Your gesticulations play havoc with runway lights as I struggle to lower landing gear. Our best intentions for enhancing this entry, have arrived confused. Even so I’m grateful for awkward aubades, dark coffee and you inside my skin.