Shadow Moon

In a jar, they have a dewdrop, and twenty tears,
Of a lifetime, forty years’
accumulated ruined gears
And a dreaming wheel that barely steers.
They - she and her shadow - lift
The jar to hold the clouds that drift
Over the moon and finely sift
The rain from them to make a gift-
They’ll sprinkle the rain on crops in drought.
And the brilliant moon is staring out
Like a giant mouth opened to shout
Or a flashlight clearing away doubt.
“You can’t make rain; this is only a dream,”-
These words from the shadow moon seem
To emanate, and then they deem
In the coffee of night the moon is cream,
No more.
The jar is filled and emptied more,
Thrown in the ocean, washed up on the shore,
After the gears have gone the way of old lore
And the droughts and harvests are no more.
In the coffee of night the moon is still cream,
So the sleeping shadows drink it and have a dream.
There are many others like it,
On Jupiter or some other planet,
Shadows of seasons, shadows of moons,
Ends of tears when seedlings grow
And the shadows dream that the moon ought to know.