Poem for August
The moon sat once so thin that I thought
my gaze would weigh it down and cause
its fall. It would float as a feather delays
its flight, as shards of pumice are caught
by the swell. I hold my cheek to yours
against the billowing night, and you raise
your eyes to the moon and murmur a cry,
erratic before the ordered sky.
I paced like a mantis, testing the earth
unseen, and hungered deep for all
the joy and each desire – the frail,
unending voices of your birth:
the mass in b minor, the cicadas, the wall
of stars, the lonesome curlew’s wail.
