The Moon

I looked at the moon


Oh, God have mercy I looked at the moon!


I sat under the street lamp


And I saw the orange light


Like summer light


Mingle then die with the moonlight


As clouds moved like elephants across the sky




But the moon shone through them


Making them ghosts


Silent ghosts of elephants
.

And branches


Dancers by day become skeletons at night


Reaching with bony fingers 


Up!


Up toward the moon


Up to the elephants


Which are ghosts


And they seem to bleed together


Into a painting


Moving and breathing and so much more


Than simply living.




The streetlight like a young child looks upward

Caught in the inhale of life


Just as the lungs become full.


It was born


And it will die


And the men whose hands made it


In their houses stare at the moonlight


On the faces of their lovers.




They think to themselves


‘How beautiful a face...


How eternal this face!’


And they kiss the moonlight


On the lips of their love
rs

And the elephants grow restless

As the night is ever so slightly darker.