Poem: Forgetting the Moon

The moon climbed into this poem.

I tried to ignore it

but it looked in through the window

one night and woke me up.

It was throwing all this light

and the snow was soaking it in

and if light were a noise,

the whole backyard

would be talking.

Sometimes for months entire

I forget about the moon. The sky

is an empty pail. How

can the moon come calling

when it has so much to do?

Lovers and tides

will not raise themselves.

But it climbed, I tell you,

in through a closed window,

and if that is too much

of a metaphor, I give you also

my heart, that old lady

in her cold walk-up.

Even she saw the moon —

she has windows, too, you know —

and though it didn’t make

the headlines — moon shines in

through somebody’s window —

I wrote it down

so if you please,

it can happen.

It happened to me.

(appeared in Mudfish, 2009)