The frogsong turned louder at the moment
The fat moon showed its root chakra,
Became a gumball gem that rose through the mist
Like a lollipop, a 3-dimensional thing in a 2-D world.
Its red eyes stared us down, like we knew nothing
Of its work, who think of tides and milky valleys
And the look of eyes that thirst for love –
It’s different in the Sea of Tranquility
Than we ever could imagine, as if our deepest wounds
Were never even felt, so did not exist.
All those fools who said the moon
Was the devil turned out to be right, for this moment,
When all that was didn’t necessarily happen
And all that will be is not a foregone conclusion.
Our prayers, even the crystals, stay at a distance,
When the mirrors return nothing.
Whatever is fated to become of us
It is not ours to know; the darkness is our canvas,
Lush and monumental, still some variant
Of servitude to a capricious master,
What can’t be seen, always such power in the void.
The usual window on the roof
Refuses its usual white,
The clouds refuse the normal infusion
Of lunar light, there is only the blood
Of the eyeball staring back
As if to ask, “What will you do?”
The poet, who finds herself at one with any
Distance, must now contend, in the falseness
Of the moment, with how the real becomes a
Symbol, too small to carry all that the heart
Grieves over. Soon it will be again so large
The smallness of the human heart
Can only be captured in its shadow,
Occluded from the fullness that takes the stage,
Occluded from the fullness that takes the stage,
Unafraid to be, dictating what it wants and
What won’t work – we have no life but this,
Bequeathing service to a hollow shell;
When that becomes nothing, must we turn into something,
Or is there only in reflection a trace of any being?
The moon rises as if by inner compulsion,
No less explicable, as the sidewalks
Turn back to white, than our own
Stop to gape, as if we can only be equal
When we see at last how destitute is our freedom.
