last full moon of the year

last moon of the year

Given our way of tracking

days, moon,

given the weight of time that seeps

then rises amidst what’s green,

what’s stone, what’s pushed

up through all that’s packed against

the grass,  against the visage

of winter’s gravid demand,

the full of you is immersed 

as you've always been, below

this copse, between

these bare fingered maples

 and into, from where I’m living now,

a perfect, well augured

tomb.  Even if I took

my first step down into it,

to finally at some end stand

inside its somehow still fresh

depth, the you that sunk there,

the you I put to rest there

 would, in true Jesus

stile, be gone, and those

linens limp against

the raw embankment.

No: why

seek ye the living

among the dead,

no I have not yet

ascended—

Because you have.

And so.

I do what every mother,

whose child has gone,

whose clothes are still soft

  with them, would do:

raise them up cupped,  palms

a split breast, 

up

to my face to drink

as though this were the only

thing I knew, the only thing

I would hereafter know,

the perfume of this birth and death

 mixed with every breath

an ebbing force surrenders to.

to listen. entirely.

moon,

let’s just listen

today.  let’s still

our clotted tongue

and keep,

 keep deeply.

our vigil.  because someone

someone,

somewhere, has their dark

descending—

and their lamps

are unlit,

or are charred,

are long-wicked
when lit,

are bilges of soot…

let’s say nothing.

  we have

listening

to do—

and then we have sifting

to do—

moon,

you are god enough

to know when the house

has burned,

has finally fallen

room by room

into itself,

and all the heat of it

has risen

has sunk…

please.

let’s, when asked,

come with our thin mesh,

come with our ear,

come with our tongue,

to shake through

to catch

to wash

stroke after stroke

the story the story the story

each little shard

whispers to us

and then let’s oh let’s

fall on our knees

for each one of them.

of shatter'd glass...

 

I have cut the moon
into 88 slices.  I need to cut her more;

she spills beyond what I’ve already
trimmed: one hundred and twenty

slips of black dotted white to the eighty eight. 

I think she is not happy

with me.  If the sky is circumscribed,
I think I'll never go beyond her.  She has

been veiled since the blue of her was bright

on the morning of her monthly reveiling.

I want to ask her, before she closes her face

again: Have you ever had such faith in a thing

one moment and then plunged so deep in its opposite
that you thought  your skin might tear for it?

She makes me read Emily, I am a feather

 in the lines: "...we both believe

and disbelieve/a hundred times
an Hour, which keeps our Believing nimble."

As true as wind, isn't it?  But we cannot see
the wind.  Only ever its drift in the trees,

in the lifting of the sea.  I want someone to clasp

my hand when I look up again.  I want what I’ve broken

to come back together without a seam. 

I want it to hold water.  And then tip, slow, a new Ursa

Major, to pour it all back in breath and gas

in silt-settled water skimmed of all the noise

of its shattering.

waning

By natural

selection, the word

originates its species,

                                    the blood flowers,

…

and small birds scavenge

                in the chaste late winter grass.

            “Winter Mornings in Charlottesville”

                                Robert Hass

But moon, I’m thinking

I should stop looking

for you.  I’m thinking

I should turn away,

that I should be the one, now,

to do the waning.

Moon…

did you know?

my cheek’s been scared

since I was four.  The family

dog bit me there.  He turned me

inside out.  I was alone

with him.  Maybe what poured

out of me and onto the grass

he licked clean

when I finally

got free and ran

home.

But maybe not.  Maybe

the blood and skin

dried against August’s

sun and he lay panting

beneath the shade

of that birch he was chained to,

birch whose morning

you set against,

summer after summer, when I

come home again.

 

The dog

was shot not long

after my face was sewn.

Sometimes (but I couldn’t be

 there

so I can’t know

for sure)

I imagine he went into the woods

ahead of my father

and sat when he was told

and looked up

and then turned his jaw

away, as though the mean

in him had finally

been set free. 

Bullets are the sounds

of endings, aren’t they?

I don’t have a gun, moon—

but the woods are still there,

and the path into them.

I think I’ll go

and try to find my dog.

I think you cannot come

along.  I think

when I come out

on the other side

you may be there

and you may ask

how I’ve been

and you may reach

for my cheek...

and before

I would have leaned

 forward. I would have.

But you hesitated.

You hesitated.

the rain. the condensed gray. and then the wine.

moon—

I’ve opened the door

for you.  But rain.  Rain

and the breaking apart

of dark that stays

dark.  What would the sky

look like if I could see

it?  From this floor

 I can only guess

at day, an ink wash

across paper

but listen: the thunder and wind

and what dripped

through the ceiling, it's caught

now in a small bucket.

—It's rain I want to drink

after all these early days

because the door is wide 

to you and you

not there—

I’m a different sort

of thirsty now.

Maybe I’m on the wrong

side of the world.  I know what's obvious.

the Mevlana and Li Po tell me

 how to be

about leaving.  Breathing

out.  Bowing to the bowing

monk.  Catching water

the winemaker turns

to wine.

Is there a moon-wine moon?

A wine entirely of you?

I want to hold it

in the cup

of my tongue.

I won’t spill a drop.

Trust me.  I’ll hold it for so long

that swallowing it

will be a new distilling

and once n my blood…

well, only you

 and I can know,

only you

and I

the hush of it

one:

moon—the truth is

I’m more like you

than I’m wanted

 to be.

This hush

 of you.

  It’s like the ache

of the wait

 of a cube

of sugar,

 sweating a letting

go into an afternoon

that’s been too humid

for hot tea—

but anticipates

it all the same: the formal

 linen, small spoon.  The music

of dissolving.   The all of it a going out

to the rim and bumping back

again, entirely the same,

entirely different.

two:

moon, sometimes

 I want the plunge

 of you

 to close over me

the way it did that summer

I was nine

and the Oarweed

floated like a girl’s

 long hair and I went

 beneath it all

and saw

 how I had to begin living

in a house

of noise. 

Surfacing

 was arduous

through the tangled

hair, the tide pushing

in…

three:

Drowning’s quiet,

isn’t it moon.

  It’s the coming up

that's loud.

The surged push of it.

The alone of it.

The utter blabber

and screech of it.

It seems an eruption

 of secrecy,

especially when

the sweet’s been

dissolved in a too large cup

 and is poured out in a trough

for the gluttonous

to slurp and let drip

down their chins.

The stain on the linen

 is a teak brown,

the brown I saw

'round the rim

of my open eyes

when I came back

 up split

with that ebbing hush.

The oarweed had drifted

 away.

And nobody noticed.

nobody

noticed.

Do I Dream Too Much? Too Little?

moon—

I searched for you,

but I was too late—

the constellations who remained,

and Jupiter, they sang

about you, how in the dark

over this house

while I slept

you arced and let down

your light at the foot

of my bed.  Penetrating light.

You went through

the roof.

Was it then

I dreamed that I was

in Ireland?  And had been there

in someone else’s skin

many times before?  Everything

smelled familiar old.  Old

was the woman who served

us tea.

She still burned

peat and coal-oil.  Her home

was old cold stone

whose pipes stitched up

the outside walls

and leaked slowly,

turning the mortar

green.  You’ve seen it

I know.

You’d followed me there

and when we met I held

your hand

in the narrow alley.

The high walls were cracked,

crooked triangles

of moss.

For once  we weren’t afraid

of bandits.

It seems we hadn’t seen

each other in a long,

long time.

A long time.

You took my crying with you

in a green glass flask.

I went home,

dry and alone. 

  Your lips

were salty

when you left.

Now that this night has almost

surrendered, the noise

of it is letting go.

And soon:

birds and day.  I should

have come out earlier. 

I should be less

sentimental.  I should

disguise myself

as a man

and go to Jerusalem

and find a small hole

at the Temple

Mount and I should empty

my pockets there.  Or maybe empty

them back 

 in Ireland.  Where

the bandits are.

And my people.  Buried.

And your hand

in that dream…

Razed

His greatest alchemy

is how he undoes

the binding

that keeps love from breathing

deep.

He loosens the chest.

                                                Rumi

moon, there’s the mist

again.  Up from the river

up from the sea

that always,

 this one at least,

flows north,

  It's our own personal

 Nile.

Some mornings

I’ve come to wonder

if I need to be

pinched

by sound

or some sifted scent

to bring you here,

before the Lazarus

in me will turn to the mouth

of the tomb

and feel his feet

begin to itch.

Whole suns, somewhere,

are exploding.

But who has noticed?

Who has turned

their head up to it all

and ached

when the remote

solar breath

breaks apart their bone

stones, and then settles

beneath, inside of them,

pushing up the seed? 

This stark glint

inside the cleft

  is ageless.

I’m not sure

 how to absorb to its

brevity.

Is it light?

Sound?

 Or something more

solid? A paused

 pair

of lips

whose glossed edges

are eager

to be kissed

before they speak?

Or is it a deeper

penetration

entirely,

liquefying everything,

 even the ‘come forth’ call,

until the darkening

of space

and then the full wind enters

and is spilled

And is stilled.

Least Bittern

Still drunk, I got up to walk on the moon

in the water…

The birds had all gone to nest;

humans, also, had grown few.

                                                  Li Po

the rain’s still,

and the mist is gone...

in the olive leaves

a setting

 crescent

moon—

what’s not lost:

our moon

was full

when I arrived

and full again

when I departed

somewhere

beneath it all

the smallest between

the grass and reeds

in the water

marshes:

the

impossibly alluring curve

 of a bittern.

small heron,

I’ve never

seen you here.

but I want to.

if you’re here

so am I.

like the tide.

without regrets—

and the long walk

into you

is punctured

by a song,

throaty

and low.

but I’m so new

to you

I’m not sure

I’m just not sure.