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.