Losing the Moon

You can lose the moon.
Of its own accord, it drowns
beneath the sea’s horizon,
or evaporates into high noon’s
blue ether. Electrical devices
erase it from night’s blackboard.
Curtained from the dark within
routine glare, you don’t see it
vanish, a shiny coin, spinning
down the sky’s long gutters
into a black hole among the stars.
You forget the jingle of old songs
and rhymes, believing you
can manage moonless, until the orb
hurtles through your window,
a cosmic snowball of luminous ice,
bowling you over with possibilities
.
•••

Immersed in academic writing until her retirement from the English Department at the University of Kansas in 2001, subsequently found that sailing and writing poems provided new ways of discovering. She’s published two collections of poetry, a memoir, a collection of nature essays, and a collection of short stories.

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You’re currently reading “Losing the Moon,” an entry on tongues of the ocean

Published:
Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 12:01 am
2010 February Issue, bredren and sistren, written word