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.